Nancy Pelosi Silent on Own Father Who Oversaw Dedication of Confederate Statue
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who on Wednesday demanded the removal of Confederate statues occupying the U.S. Capitol, has remained silent on her father’s role in overseeing the dedication of the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument while serving as Baltimore’s mayor in 1948.
Pelosi this week formally requested the removal of Confederate statues occupying the U.S. Capitol, dismissing them as “monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end.” Her demand comes as angry protesters across the nation take matters into their own hands, vandalizing — and in some cases, beheading — statues and monuments memorializing the Civil War era and beyond.
“As I have said before, the halls of Congress are the very heart of our democracy. The statues in the Capitol should embody our highest ideals as Americans, expressing who we are and who we aspire to be as a nation,” Pelosi said in her letter to Committee Chair Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Vice Chair Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).
“Monuments to men who advocated cruelty and barbarism to achieve such a plainly racist end are a grotesque affront to these ideals,” she continued. “Their statues pay homage to hate, not heritage. They must be removed.”
However, her father, Thomas D’Alesandro, Jr., oversaw the dedication of such a statue in Baltimore’s Wyman Park — the Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee Monument — as mayor of the city in 1948. At the time, the Speaker’s father said people could look to Jackson’s and Lee’s lives as inspiration and urged Americans to “emulate Jackson’s example and stand like a stone wall against aggression in any form that would seek to destroy the liberty of the world.” (Read more from “Nancy Pelosi Silent on Own Father Who Oversaw Dedication of Confederate Statue” HERE)
Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE
