Crew prepares to remove Roger Taney statue from Maryland State House grounds

[Princess Turandot]

Source: Baltimore Sun

Under the cover of night, a crew prepared to remove the statue of former Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney from the grounds of the State House early Friday morning.

The Department of General Services will remove the bronze likeness of Taney from its base and then cover the base in plywood, according to an email outlining the plan obtained by The Baltimore Sun. The statue will then be moved to a secure storage facility for the Maryland State Archives.

The move comes after mounting pressure to do away with the Taney statue culminated in the State House Trust voting Wednesday to remove it. Potential changes to the historic building and its grounds must be approved by the four-member trust.

Taney was chief justice of the Supreme Court and author of the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and found that black Americans could not be citizens.


Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/politics/bs-md-taney-statue-removed-20170818-story.html

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There's a live feed going on here, but it's hard to see what's going on:

https://www.facebook.com/baltimoresun/videos/vb.9299179711/10155640782484712/?type=2&theater

WaPo has a longer article here about the argument over this among the officials.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/md-politics/md-senate-president-slams-hogan-for-fast-vote-to-remove-taney-statue/2017/08/17/41833b12-8390-11e7-ab27-1a21a8e006ab_story.html?utm_term=.cbe93deec6a3

[Bladewire]

1. Yes!

[iluvtennis]

2. Good. Read an article today that Germany doesn't keep "monuments" of Hitler/era just for the reason

that some misinformed folks will go rally around the monuments of the monstrous things that Germany wants to forget.

[SunSeeker]

3. It's not that Germany wants to forget them, it just doesn't want to honor them...

Which is what these monuments do. These Confederate monuments honor the Confederacy. They also send a vicious message to African Americans that the government entity on whose property the monument stands supports the white supremacist ideas of the Confederacy.

[BumRushDaShow]

5. And most of these Confederate monuments were erected at the dawn of the Jim Crow era

in the early part of the 20th century, notably the 1920s.

[iluvtennis]

7. Yep, to try and intimidate and put fear into African Americans.

[iluvtennis]

6. Agreed.

[whathehell]

4. Good! n/ t.