A statue honoring a Mainer who became a U.S. Supreme Court justice is drawing fresh scrutiny because of his connection to an infamous decision upholding racial segregation.
The Kennebec Journal reports that Maine’s supreme court justices sent a letter earlier this month to Kennebec County officials asking them to consider moving the statue of Melville Fuller from its spot outside the county courthouse in Augusta, saying its placement isn’t “consistent with our values.”
Fuller, who was born in Augusta and died in Sorrento, served as chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court from 1888 to 1910. As chief justice, he presided over several notable cases, including the top court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision.
In 1896, Fuller joined the majority decision written by Justice Henry Billings that upheld racial segregation, saying that “separate but equal” facilities and services didn’t violate the 13th and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The ruling ushered in the era of restrictive Jim Crow laws, and it stood until 1954 when the high court struck it down in its decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
The renewed scrutiny comes amid a national dialogue over the legacy of racism in the United States in the weeks since the police killing of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis on Memorial Day. That has sparked debates over whether statues and other monuments honoring men with connections to slavery and subjugation of people of color and Indigenous Americans should be removed from public spaces.
Kennebec County Commissioner Nancy Rines told the Journal that no objections were raised when the statue to Fuller was erected in 2013. It was the gift of Robert Fuller Jr., who funded the project, according to the newspaper.
Kennebec County Administrator Robert Devlin told the newspaper that no formal discussions about the statue and the justices’ Aug. 5 letter have happened yet, but said they will likely “soon.”