The Smithsonian Inventory (
visit link) provides a description and other information:
"Artist:
Baker, Bryant, 1881-1970, sculptor.
Title:
Justice Edward Douglass White, (sculpture).
Dates:
1925. Dedicated April 8, 1926.
Medium:
Sculpture: bronze; Base: granite or marble.
Dimensions:
Sculpture: approx. 8 x 6 x 5 ft.; Base: approx. 7 ft. 6 in. x 5 ft. x 5 ft.
Inscription:
Bryant Baker 1925 (On front of base:) EDWARD DOUGLASS WHITE/Chief Justice of the United States/erected by/The State of Louisiana/A.D. MDCCCCXXVI/Re-erected on this site/By the Lawyers of Louisiana/A.D. MDCCCCLXI (Left:) Associate Justice of/the United States Supreme Court/March 12, 1894-December 19, 1910/Chief Justice of the United States/December 19, 1910-May 191, 1921 (Right:) Associate Justice Supreme Court of Louisiana/January 11, 1879-February 12, 1980/United States Senator From Louisiana/1891-1894. (Rear:) "Teach the lessons that settled principles/may be overthrown at any time/and confusion/and turmoil must ultimately result----. The fundamental concept of a judicial body-----be bereft of value/and because a most dangerous instrument to/the rights and liberties of the people." Dissent in Pollock vs. Farmers' Loan & Trust Co., 157 U.S. 429 signed
Description:
Full-length portrait of Edward Douglass White, standing, wearing long judicial robes and holding a book in his proper left hand."
and this website (
visit link) informs us:
"A bronze statue of United States Chief Justice Edward Douglass White stands before the white marble Louisiana Supreme Court building in the 400 block of Royal Street. Chief Justice White appears in his judicial robe holding a law book. White’s statue was unveiled on April 8, 1926, during a ceremony attended by his widow and the sculptor, Bryant Baker. White, the only native of Louisiana to serve as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, was also a Louisiana Supreme Court Justice. White served on the United States Supreme Court for 27 years, from March 12, 1894 until his death on May 19, 1921. Having first served as an Associate Justice, President William Howard Taft appointed the 65 year old White as Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court in 1910.
Chief Justice White was born on November 3, 1845, on his family’s sugar plantation in Lafourche Parish near Thibodaux, Louisiana,. His grandfather was James White, a delegate to the Continental Congress and first judge of the Western District of the Territory of Orleans. His father, Edward D. White, served in Congress from 1829 until 1834, and then as Louisiana governor from 1835 to1839. Chief Justice White was not yet two years old when his father passed away on April 18, 1847.
White attended St. Mary’s Preparatory School in Maryland and entered Georgetown College at age fifteen. When the Civil War broke out, White returned to New Orleans and attended the Jesuit College, now Loyola University of New Orleans. He enlisted in the Confederate Army, and allegedly was captured by Union troops at Port Hudson. After the war, White studied law with Edward Bermudez, later a Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice, attended the University of Louisiana, and was admitted to the Louisiana bar in 1866.
When he was just 25 years old, White won a landmark case in the Louisiana Supreme Court. White argued that Tardos, a plantation owner on the Mississippi River, was not required to build and pay for a levee in front of his property. Before the Civil War, owners of riparian land on rivers and bayous were required to construct levees and embankments at their own cost. If they failed to take care of the levees, the civil authority would do the work at their expense. During Reconstruction, in 1865, the Louisiana Governor appointed a Board of Levee Commissioners to oversee and repair the levees, and the Legislature confirmed the Board. The Court agreed with White’s argument that the riparian owner could not now be required to pay for the levee, holding that the former laws requiring the riparian owners to build levees were repealed:
The legislation on the subject of levees since the late war has manifestly been framed with reference to the great changes which have been wrought in the condition of the country by the late war. The vast expense formerly imposed upon the riparian proprietors of building the heavy embankments necessary on the Mississippi, and to make continuous repairs upon them, would now, under the altered state of affairs in regard to capital and labor, be utterly ruinous. Hence the policy was a wise one to relieve that class of our people by a change of the laws and regulations in respect to the levee system (Police Jury, Parish of Jefferson v. Tardos).
Just nine years later, in January 1879, Louisiana Governor Francis T. Nicholls appointed the 34 year old White to the Louisiana Supreme Court. He only served a year since the Constitution of 1879 created a new Supreme Court. Justice White then returned to private practice. After supporting Governor Nicholls in his successful re-election campaign, White was elected to the United States Senate in May 1888. In 1894, President Grover Cleveland appointed White, who was 49 years old, to the United States Supreme Court. Sixteen years later, President William Howard Taft elevated White to Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, the first time that a Supreme Court Justice was so honored.
In a 1915 landmark case, Chief Justice White struck down the “Grandfather Clause,” that denied black citizens the right to vote based on pre-Fifteenth Amendment standards. The Fifteenth Amendment states in part: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” Oklahoma, as well as other states, imposed a literacy test on voters, but exempted illiterate persons eligible to vote prior to January 1, 1866, that is, before the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment. Illiterate voters eligible to vote prior to January 1, 1866 were white voters. Since the Grandfather Clause allowed illiterate white voters to vote, but not illiterate black voters, Chief Justice White ruled for a unanimous Supreme Court that the Grandfather Clause violated the Fifteenth Amendment and was void (Guinn v. United States).
It took fifty more years for voter literacy tests to be banned in the South. Congress abolished literacy tests in the Voting Rights Act, which President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965. Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act prohibits the denial or abridgment of the right to vote based on literacy tests.
Chief Justice White also upheld the Adamson Act, a 1916 federal law which provided an 8 hour workday and overtime compensation for interstate railroad workers (Wilson v. New).
Chief Justice White died in Washington, D.C., on May 19, 1921, at age 75."