BALTIMORE (AP) — The Latest on the removal of Confederate monuments in Baltimore (all times local):
6:20 p.m.
The State House Trust has decided to remove a statue of Roger Brooke Taney from the State House grounds in Annapolis.
The vote took place via email on Wednesday, and came after Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh removed four Confederate-related statues in Baltimore overnight Tuesday.
Three of the Trust’s four members supported the decision.
Taney was the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision denying citizenship to African Americans.
There is no indication of how quickly the statue will be removed.
Pugh said Wednesday that her decision to remove Baltimore’s statues at night was deliberate.
She said, “it was important that we move quickly and quietly, and that’s what we did.”
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12:20 p.m.
The former president of the Maryland Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy says she thinks Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh has made a mistake by taking down Confederate monuments.
Pugh had four Confederate statues removed overnight Tuesday.
Carolyn Billups says she thinks the monuments should stay up, and that Pugh shouldn’t have removed them in such secrecy.
Billups said, “I don’t think it should have been done, period.”
She added, “the decision was made and executed and everything was done under cover. I’d like to have at least had the opportunity to pay my last respects.”
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11:40 a.m.
The mayor of Baltimore says it was important for the city to move quickly and quietly to remove its Confederate monuments.
Mayor Catherine Pugh spoke to reporters Wednesday, hours after workers toiled throughout the night to bring the statues down and haul them away on trucks.
The mayor said she’s been working on removing the statues for months. A spokesman says Pugh decided Tuesday that the city would remove the statues overnight.
Pugh said she believed “enough speeches had been made” and she wanted to get the monuments out of the city.
The city’s decision to remove the monuments came days after a violent white nationalist rally in Virginia that was sparked by plans to remove a similar statue there.
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7 a.m.
Confederate monuments have been removed overnight in Baltimore.
Local news outlets report that workers began hauling monuments away early Wednesday, days after a white nationalist rally in Virginia turned deadly.
WBAL-TV reports that a crane removed a monument to Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson” from its pedestal around 3 a.m. The TV station says the statue was placed on a flatbed truck 45 minutes later.
Photos posted on social media show people standing on top of the base where the Lee and Jackson monument used to stand.
Photos taken by The Baltimore Sun shows workers taking away a monument dedicated to the Confederate Women of Maryland.
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