More cities consider Confederate monument removal

The city of Baltimore took down four Confederate monuments early Wednesday morning following a violent white nationalist rally in Virginia last weekend protesting the removal of a similar statue. “It’s done,” Mayor Catherine Pugh told The Baltimore Sun. “They needed to come down. My concern is for the safety and security of our people. We moved as quickly as we could.” A commission appointed by the previous mayor had recommended removing a monument to Marylander Roger B. Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to African-Americans, as well as a statue of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Pugh said Monday she wants the statues placed in Confederate cemeteries elsewhere in Maryland. In the aftermath of the weekend violence in Charlottesville, Va., more cities are considering the removal of Confederate monuments. Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings announced plans Tuesday to ask his city council to appoint a task force to study the fate of the city’s Confederate statues. Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican, called on state officials Monday to remove a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate cavalry general and an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, from the Tennessee Capitol. Similar plans were being made in San Antonio; Lexington, Ky.; Memphis, Tenn.; and elsewhere.