Government
How Baltimore Removed Its Confederate Monuments Overnight
For a city dogged by violence and unrest, this was a big deal.
Early this morning, a small crowd of joggers stood at the polished granite base of a statue that wasn’t there, a monument to the women of the Confederacy.
It had been in the middle of a small park across from Johns Hopkins University since 1916. Last night a crew of contractors dispatched by the city pulled it up and trucked it away, along with two other Jim Crow-era memorials and a statue of Roger B. Taney, the Maryland-born Chief Justice who authored the 1857 Dred Scott decision. The elaborate operation went off without a hitch overnight. Most Baltimoreans woke up to the news that a long-simmering controversy over the racially inflammatory artifacts was simply over.