RadioOnFire.com - Days after a deadly neo-Nazi rally around a Confederate statue in Virginia, all four of Baltimore's Confederate monuments were taken away by city crews late Tuesday into early Wednesday.
About a dozen city crews and private contractors were seen in Wyman Park, removing the Lee and Jackson Monument.
Crews started getting ready around midnight Tuesday. By 3 a.m., crews had hooked the monument to a crane as a flatbed truck awaited nearby.
"I don't know where they are yet," Pugh said in a news conference at City Hall hours later. "I mean, I was up til 5:00 this morning to make sure they got off of those podiums where they are. I wanted them out of the city, and I would suspect that they're out of the city."
The overnight move had little to do with activists' plans to tear down the monuments themselves on Wednesday evening. Pugh said she wasn't even aware of that. What she was aware of was the violence that broke out in Charlottesville, Virginia amid a rally by armed neo-Nazis and white supremacists around a statue of Robert E. Lee that was targeted for removal. It's believed to have been the largest gathering of white supremacists in a decade.
Violent clashes broke out between white nationalists and counterprotesters and a woman was killed when a car plowed into a crowd of people who were there to condemn the white nationalists. Heather Heyer, 32, lost her life and many more were wounded when a car plowed into counter-protesters. The suspected driver, now in custody, has been said to have Nazi sympathies.
"I think any city that has Confederate statues are concerned about violence occurring in their city and I just think that Baltimore, right in the midst of getting the [police] consent decree completed, this is not something that is needed," Pugh said.
On Monday night, the City Council cited events in Charlottesville, Virginia, when it adopted a resolution calling for the immediate destruction of Confederate monuments. Mayor Catherine Pugh and City Council members differed over how to remove the city's four Confederate monuments, but crews were seen early Wednesday removing statues. Pugh said she quietly conferred with council members late Tuesday.
"I thought that there's enough grandstanding, enough speeches being made--get it done," Pugh said. "With the climate of this nation, I think it's very important that we move quickly and quietly."
Pugh said that she has talked with contractors about logistics, contacted the Maryland Historical Trust for permissions and identified Confederate cemeteries to send some statues to. She said various parties have contacted the city about the statues, including a university.
A commission formed by then-mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake last year recommended removing the Lee-Jackson monument and the Taney statue.
But Pugh's decision comes as other cities consider the future of their Confederate monuments, including Tampa, Florida; Columbia, South Carolina; Lexington, Kentucky; and Stone Mountain, Georgia.
Advocates of Southern heritage say removing these symbols is a disservice to the men who fought in the Civil War.
Source WBAL
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