#ThatsProgress: In the Wake of Charlottesville, Baltimore Removes 4 Confederate Statues

As people watched early Wednesday, crews carted away Confederate monuments in Baltimore, where city leaders had four of them removed from public property following the deadly protests in Virginia over the weekend. According to NBC News,

• The statue of Supreme Court Chief Roger Taney was taken down from its location in the Mount Vernon Place neighborhood before 2:30 a.m. Wednesday. Taney had authored the Dred Scott decision — the landmark 1857 Supreme Court ruling that said blacks were not considered American citizens and the federal government couldn’t regulate slavery

• Crews removed monuments of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas. J. “Stonewall” Jackson

• Also removed were the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the Confederate Women’s Monument

The white nationalists were protesting the planned removal of a Gen. Lee statue from Charlottesville’s Emancipation Park.

Baltimore City Councilman Brandon M. Scott said he’d like to see the statues melted down and

“re-purposed to honor true American heroes.”

It was not immediately clear where the city put the monuments.

Meanwhile, L.A.’ Hollywood Forever Cemetery took down a six-foot Confederate monument maintained by the Long Beach chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy. The group agreed to take back the monument, which had been at the famed cemetery — which is private property — since 1925.

Tyler Cassity, president and co-owner of the cemetery, told NBC that people have been calling to demand the stone piece be removed.