Confederate Symbols Removed From Maryland In 2020, What Remains – Patch.com

MARYLAND More Confederate monuments were removed in 2020 across the United States than during the five previous years combined, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in its most recent "Whose Heritage?" report that tracks public displays related to the Confederacy.

Ninety-four of the 168 Confederate symbols removed or renamed nationwide in 2020 were monuments, the report found. Fifty-eight were removed from 2015 to 2019.

In Maryland, one Confederate symbol was removed in 2020, according to the Law Center.

The Jeb Stuart Trail at Woodstock Equestrian Park in Dickerson, in Montgomery County, was renamed the Northern Edge Trail in December. Stuart was a Confederate Army general.

Some residents said the name change didn't go far enough, and called it a missed opportunity to honor someone who fought against racism.

"Very negative names were deliberately placed on these signs for wrong-headed purposes, racist purposes," County Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission Member Okianer Christian Darktold Montgomery Community Media. "I think you put a name there that says 'we're not this way. This is not what we value.'"

The SPLC report said three monuments remain in Maryland, but did not specify where they are located.

The "Talbot Boys" monument dedicated to Talbot County residents who fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War remains near the entrance of the county courthouse in Easton, the Baltimore Sun said. It is believed to be the only Confederate statue remaining on public ground in Maryland.

In 2017 Baltimore officials removed four Confederate monuments from public land overnight to avoid protests. They are: The Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on W. Mount Royal Avenue; the Confederate Women's Monument in Bishop Square Park, N.; the Roger B. Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place and the Robert E. Lee and Thomas. J. "Stonewall" Jackson Monument in Wyman Park.

A statue to Maryland native Roger Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery, was taken from the State House grounds in Annapolis in 2017, and a plaque honoring a Confederate general was removed from the courthouse grounds in Wicomico County, the Baltimore Sun reported.

Lecia Brooks, chief of staff for the Law Center, called 2020 a "transformative" year in the movement to remove Confederate symbols nationally.

"Over the course of seven months, more symbols of hate were removed from public property than in the preceding four years combined," Brooks said in a statement.

The Law Center began tracking the movement to take the monuments down in 2015, when a white supremacist entered a South Carolina church and killed nine Black parishioners.

Virginia by far saw the most Confederate symbols removed in 2020 with 71, the Law Center's report found. The states with the next highest number are North Carolina with 24, and Alabama and Texas, both with 12.

While the greatest concentration of symbols remains in former Confederate and border states, many exist in Northern states and states formed after the Civil War. California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington, Idaho and Montana all house a small number of monuments.

Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson are the top Confederates with statues, roads and schools named in their honor, according to BeenVerified.com.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has the sixth highest number of monuments.

Brooks praised Virginia, which changed its preservation law and, according to Brooks, "led by example" by removing so many Confederate symbols in 2020. Preservation laws in several other Southern states including Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina still exist and prohibit individual communities from removing certain displays.

The movement to remove these symbols from public spaces became part of the national reckoning on racial injustice following the killing last May of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd's neck for several minutes.

All but one of the 168 symbols that were removed last year came after Floyd's death. The symbol that was removed before May 30 was Virginia's decision to replace Lee-Jackson Day with Election Day in April.

The Law Center considers public Confederate symbols as any government buildings, monuments and statues, plaques, markers, schools, parks, counties, cities, military property and streets or highways named after anyone associated with the Confederacy.

The organization said 2,100 Confederate symbols remain in the country into 2021. Monuments account for 704 of the symbols, the Law Center said.

"These dehumanizing symbols of pain and oppression continue to serve as backdrops to important government buildings, halls of justice, public parks and U.S. military properties," she said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

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Confederate Symbols Removed From Maryland In 2020, What Remains - Patch.com