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Home • News

'It’s Done.' Baltimore Removes Its Confederate Statues

“It’s done. They needed to come down"
'It’s Done.' Baltimore Removes Its Confederate Statues
Jerry Jackson—The Baltimore Sun/AP)
By Melissa Chan · Updated October 26, 2020
This article originally appeared on Time. Baltimore hauled away its Confederate statues early Wednesday, following the deadly white supremacist rally in Virginia that started over a Robert E. Lee monument. The Maryland city has removed four statues of Confederate soldiers and leaders, including its own statue of Lee and one of Roger B. Taney, the controversial Supreme Court Justice who declared in 1857 that slaves were not U.S. citizens, according to the New York Times.
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The overnight operation began midnight Wednesday and lasted until about 5:30 a.m., much to the cheers of a small group of activists who had gathered to watch, the Times and the Baltimore Sun reported.  

All of Baltimore's confederate monuments are gone. pic.twitter.com/a14QhTWI1d

— baynardwoods (@baynardwoods) August 16, 2017
     

Activists atop the Lee Jackson statue base. pic.twitter.com/IHbFtVQ81w

— baynardwoods (@baynardwoods) August 16, 2017
The Baltimore City Council voted Monday to take the statues down immediately. The removal order, from Mayor Catherine Pugh, came after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Va., over the weekend when a car plowed into a crowd of counter-protesters at a white supremacist rally.   “It’s done,” Pugh said of the statues’ removal, according to the Sun. “They needed to come down.”