The House on Tuesday approved renaming the Capitol Visitor Center’s (CVC) main hall Emancipation Hall. Supporters said the name would memorialize the country’s struggle against slavery and honor slaves who helped build the Capitol.
“It is really the right thing to do and the right time in history,” said Rep. Zach Wamp (R-Tenn.), the bill's sponsor. “It really speaks to freedom. When slaves were emancipated it was a defining moment in our history. It also honors slaves that built the Capitol.”
The measure was approved in a 398-6 roll call vote requested by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.). She made the request after the measure initially was approved by voice vote.
The request for a roll-call vote by a supporter of the measure was unusual, as it is much more common for opponents who lose a voice vote to request a formal roll-call vote. Norton’s office described the move, which will require members to cast votes in support of or against the measure on the record, as routine.
The measure already had bipartisan support, and had won 227 co-sponsors.
“We’re very hopeful that there will be little opposition, if any,” Wamp said in an interview before the roll-call vote.
Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.) said the hall should be a memorial to the country’s struggles with slavery and segregation. “The Hall will be a concrete testament to the fact that the long arc of history bends toward freedom and justice,” Jackson said.
The CVC is slated to open in November 2008 at a cost of $621 million.
Some members suggested naming the CVC’s exhibition hall “Emancipation Hall” would be more appropriate.
For example, Rep. John Mica (Fla.), the ranking Republican on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which recently moved the bill to the House floor, said he would prefer naming the center’s exhibition space Emancipation Hall because the space will house President Abraham Lincoln’s catafalque, the platform that supported Lincoln’s casket and that has subsequently been used for others who have lain in state in the Capitol.
“I have no qualm with naming an appropriate space [Emancipation Hall],” Mica said in a floor statement. “I just think it would be more fitting where we have the Great Emancipator,” he said, referring to Lincoln.
A six-member task force that included former and current members of Congress was formed to offer recommendations on how to properly recognize enslaved African-Americans who built the Capitol. It recently endorsed renaming the hall Emancipation Hall.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee, is a co-sponsor of the companion legislation in the Senate.
