Maryland Can Order Confederate Statues To Be Restored

The Maryland Historical Trust has come to the conclusion that Baltimore city officials did not have the authority to remove three Confederate monuments.

The Maryland Historical Trust stated that while it does not have plans to do so, it reserves the right to order the city to put the removed monuments back.

Maryland Historical Trust Director Elizabeth Hughes shared the agency’s conclusions in a letter to the head of the city’s architectural preservation agency on Oct. 20, reports The Baltimore Sun. Hughes cited a 1984 contract between the city and the state of Maryland that gave the historical trust final say on changes to the monuments.

Hughes wrote in the letter that state trustees “will not concede that MHT lacks the authority … to compel restoration,” adding, “the Trustees believe that the best way forward is for MHT and the City to work cooperatively towards a mutual resolution.”

Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh ordered the removal of four Confederate statues in Baltimore on Aug. 16 following the protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, between white nationalists and counter-protesters, which turned deadly.

The removed statues commemorated Confederate generals, soldiers, sailors and women. One statue commemorated Roger Taney, the Supreme Court justice who wrote the Dred Scott decision, which declared that black Americans did not have civil rights.

The mayor’s staff said she had the authority to order the removal of the monuments under her powers to safeguard the public and under the responsibility of the city’s parks department director to protect the monuments. Two of the monuments had already been vandalized before their removal.

Pugh said that it was “in the best interest of the city” that the monuments be removed, reports The New York Times. “I said with the climate of this nation that I think it’s very important that we move quickly and quietly,” Pugh said.

The monuments were removed without public notice, fundraising or a plan for a permanent location for the monuments. The move was made without notice to avoid conflict seen in cities such as Charlottesville and New Orleans.

“The mayor has the right to protect her city,” Pugh said. “For me, the statues represented pain, and not only did I want to protect my city from any more of that pain, I also wanted to protect my city from any of the violence that was occurring around the nation. We don’t need that in Baltimore.”

Cities around the U.S. have seen calls from residents to remove Confederate monuments following a violent clash in August between white supremacists and counter-protestors over the removal of a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville.

“You’re going to see another wave of these removals,” said David Goldfield, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, who studies Confederate symbols. “The fact that it’s done fairly expeditiously is not surprising because if you do it quickly the opposition can’t build up, and the confrontations that we’ve had, not only in Charlottesville but elsewhere, will not materialize.”

Sources: The Baltimore Sun, The New York Times / Featured Image: Pixabay / Embedded Images: Kim Hairston/Baltimore Sun