BALTIMORE — (CNN, Heather Curtis) Baltimore removed four Confederate monuments early Wednesday after a white nationalist rally to protect memorials turned deadly over the weekend in Virginia.
The City Council voted unanimously Monday to remove the monuments immediately, CNN affiliate WBAL reported.
“I just thought there was no need for fanfare. Let’s just get it done, and move forward,” said Baltimore City Mayor Catherine Pugh.
By early Wednesday, video posted on social media showed cranes slowly lowering some of the monuments from their perches. As of Wednesday morning, Pugh didn’t know how much it cost to remove the four statues.
The removals come as cities and states are considering taking down Confederate monuments following the clashes at Saturday’s rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which left one anti-racism protester dead.
“The city charter says if the mayor, according to our city attorney, if the mayor wants to protect, or feel she needs to protect the public and keep her community safe, she has the right to keep her community safe,” Pugh said.
When asked what the city’s defense would be if sued by the Sons of the Confederacy, she said she had no idea.
Statues in Lexington, Kentucky, are expected to be removed, while in Durham, North Carolina, a woman was arrested in the toppling of a Confederate statue during a protest Monday.
In New Orleans, the final Confederate statue in the city came down in May.
The memorials removed in Baltimore included the Roger B. Taney Monument, and a monument honoring Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson. Pugh said they may go to Confederate cemeteries or a university.
Taney, a Supreme Court chief justice, led the infamous Dred Scott decision a few years before the Civil War. It found that slaves were not citizens of the United States and therefore were not protected under the US Constitution.
The 13th and 14th amendments, which were adopted in 1865 and 1868, formally outlawed slavery and granted citizenship “to all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” which included former slaves.
The Southern Poverty Law Center last year cataloged 718 Confederate monuments and statues. It said about 300 of them are in Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina.
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