Statues in the U.S. Capitol include noted Confederate leaders and postbellum white supremacists. Should these now be removed as well?

The killings of nine churchgoers in Charleston last week by an alleged white supremacist brought new attention to the Confederate battle flag flying outside the South Carolina state house, and beyond. There are many symbols of the Confederacy and of racist ideology in other capitals -- including the U.S. Capitol.

That starts with the Mississippi state flag, which incorporates the Confederate battle flag and hangs in several locations in the Capitol complex, including in the underground tunnels connecting the Rayburn House Office Building and Dirksen Senate Office Building to the Capitol. It extends to a number of statues in the Capitol itself -- including one of Jefferson Davis, who served as both a congressman and a U.S. senator before becoming president of the Confederate States of America.

The Davis statue is part of the National Statuary Hall Collection, which is established by act of Congress and consists of two statues donated by each state. About a third of the statues, some of them dating back to the early 1870s, stand in Statuary Hall itself; the rest are placed elsewhere in the Capitol complex. Mississippi furnished the Davis statute in 1931, and it now stands in Statuary Hall -- but Davis is far from the only figure associated with the Confederacy or with white supremacism to be commemorated in the collection.

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