Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Tuesday called for the removal of a statue of former Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who penned the Dred Scott decision upholding slavery in 1857, from the lawn of the state house.
“As I said at my inauguration, Maryland has always been a state of middle temperament, which is a guiding principle of our administration. While we cannot hide from our history – nor should we – the time has come to make clear the difference between properly acknowledging our past and glorifying the darkest chapters of our history,” Hogan said in a statement. “With that in mind, I believe removing the Justice Roger B. Taney statue from the State House grounds is the right thing to do, and we will ask the State House Trust to take that action immediately.”
In the past, Hogan has opposed removing the Taney statue. Last year he called the push for the statue to be moved from the state house lawn “political correctness run amok.”
However, the deadly attack in Charlottesville at a counter-protest to a white nationalist rally has pushed lawmakers in the state to again consider whether the Taney statue should remain prominently displayed on public land.
Democratic state House Speaker Michael Busch on Monday called for the statue to be removed from the lawn, arguing that leaving it in place “would send a message that we condone what took place, that slavery is alright.”
Both Bush and Hogan sit on the four-person Maryland State House Trust, which would need to vote in favor of removing the statue from the lawn. The other two members are Democratic Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller and Charles Edson, the chair of the Maryland Historical Trust’s board of trustees.
Miller told the Baltimore Sun that while he would prefer that the statue remain on the state house lawn, he would not block its removal if the other three members of the trust supported its removal. Edson has not weighed in on the matter, but a spokeswoman for the Maryland Historical Trust, Elaine Bachmann, told the newspaper that there is no precedent for a statue being removed from the state house.
The deadly attack in Charlottesville over the weekend has prompted several state and local lawmakers to call for symbols of the Confederacy and slavery to be removed from public land.
