Elected officials and residents have sought for years to remove the name of white supremacist Francis G. Newlands from a fountain in Chevy Chase Circle. Now, the effort is getting a high-profile endorsement from two U.S. senators.

Chris Van Hollen and Ben Cardin, both Democratic U.S. senators from Maryland, introduced a bill Tuesday that would remove Newlands’ name from the federally controlled park, which sits in the middle of a heavily used traffic circle on the D.C./Maryland border. D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton introduced similar legislation in 2020 and 2021 with support from U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland).

Newlands, a Mississippi-born Democrat, served in both chambers of Congress before he died in 1917. He was also a land developer and an avowed segregationist who built the tony neighborhoods of Chevy Chase, then sought to exclude racial and ethnic minorities from moving there.

“Statues dedicated to Confederates and segregationists belong in museums, not on our streets where they can be misconstrued to mean current support of their racist ideologies,” Del. Norton said in a statement. “Newlands belongs in the dustbin of history, not preserved on a traffic circle that symbolizes the unity between the nation’s capital and the state of Maryland.”

Newlands wrote in 1909 that Black people are a “race of children” who require “guidance, industrial training, and the development of self-control.” He called to repeal the 15th Amendment, which gave Black men the right to vote.

The development firm Newlands founded, the Chevy Chase Land Co., is still in business today. According to a statement from Sen. Cardin, the company supports removing Newlands’ name from the fountain, “in the interest of building a more inclusive community.” The company restored and rededicated the fountain to Newlands in 1990.

Chevy Chase Circle occupies both a sliver of Northwest D.C. and Montgomery County, though it’s technically owned and controlled by the federal government, via the National Park Service. Newlands’ name — chiseled on the fountain which his widow paid to construct in 1933 — has been a subject of debate in Chevy Chase for many years, and the Chevy Chase Village Board of Managers introduced a resolution in 2020 supporting its removal. But local governments don’t have jurisdiction over the park where the fountain is located, and can’t strike Newlands’ name without an act of Congress.

Other local institutions named after or memorializing white supremacists have come under increased scrutiny in recent years, particularly following the 2020 police killing of George Floyd. D.C. leaders recently approved renaming Wilson High School in Northwest after two Black educators, rather than the former U.S. president who supported racial segregation in the federal workforce. In Virginia, crews recently dismantled a 60-foot tall statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that had stood for more than 100 years on Richmond’s Monument Avenue. It was replaced by a memorial to emancipation.