Days after white supremacists descended upon Charlottesville in a deadly, violent rally to protest the removal of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, the City of Baltimore quietly removed its four Confederate statues in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Baltimore has been debating the removals of the monuments since 2015, after white supremacist and mass shooter Dylann Roof opened lethal fire on a black church in South Carolina. In wake of the violence in Charlottesville, in which a white nationalist plowed through a crowd with a car and killed one woman, on Monday Baltimore’s City Council voted for their removal. Mayor Catherine Pugh issued the final order.
Here’s the Lee-Jackson monument, a double statue of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson on horses, being put on a truck:
The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in 1903, comes down:
And here’s the last one—the Roger B. Taney Monument, erected in 1887 in homage to slave defender and Former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney:
The city has not yet announced what they plan to do with the monuments. According to the New York Times, Pugh has suggested the monuments be relocated to Confederate cemeteries in Maryland. Others, like City Councilman Brandon M. Scott, say they should be destroyed. “These people were terrorists. They were traitors. Why are we honoring them?” he said.
DISCUSSION
I personally think they should be melted down into urinals, but I’m willing to entertain other options.