State rules on Baltimore Confederate monuments
BALTIMORE — The state agency charged with protecting Maryland’s history has concluded that Baltimore officials didn’t have the legal authority to remove three statues commemorating the Confederacy and says it reserves the right to order the city to put them back.
Elizabeth Hughes, director of the Maryland Historical Trust, shared the trustees’ conclusions in an Oct. 20 letter to the head of Baltimore’s architectural preservation agency.
Hughes said the state trustees “will not concede that MHT lacks the authority ... to compel restoration.”
“That said ... the Trustees believe that the best way forward is for MHT and the City to work cooperatively towards a mutual resolution,” she wrote.
In the wake of violent protests in Charlottesville in August, Baltimore Mayor Catherine E. Pugh ordered the removal of four statues in Baltimore, including those commemorating Confederate generals, soldiers and sailors, and women, and one of Roger Taney, the chief justice of the Supreme Court who wrote the Dred Scott decision declaring black Americans had no civil rights.
Pugh’s staff concluded that she had broad authority to order the monuments taken down under her powers to safeguard the public and under the city parks department director’s powers to protect the monuments.
Two of the statues already had been vandalized.
City Solicitor Andre Davis said the city had not issued a formal response to the state trust.
“We remain confident that an acceptable resolution of the different perspectives on these issues is within reach,” he said in a statement.
The dispute with the state historical trust arose because of a 1984 contract between the state and the city that gives the state body the final say on any changes to the monuments. The contract doesn’t apply to the statue of Taney.
On Aug. 16 — the morning after the monuments had been removed — city officials sent a letter to the state trust informing it that they believed the contract didn’t apply because the situation was an emergency. The letter was provided to The Baltimore Sun under a Public Information Act request.
The state trust provided Hughes’ letter in response to questions about the city letter.
The future of the monuments remains unclear. They are in storage while Baltimore officials try to find them a permanent home.
In her letter, Hughes asked that the city find somewhere to put the monuments within nine months and secure their installation within 18 months.