County votes to remove last Confederate statue from Maryland courthouse
The lost cause loses again.
A Confederate monument will be removed from a county courthouse lawn in Maryland and relocated to a battlefield across the border in Virginia.
The Talbot County Council voted 3-2 to move the 1916 “Talbot Boys” statue from a courthouse in Easton, about 60 miles southeast from Baltimore. The statue had long been next to a former slave market site in the town.
It is believed to be the last statue dedicated to Confederate soldiers on public property in the state.
Local activists have tried to get the Jim Crow-era statue removed for years, a process that accelerated earlier this year when a group sued the county, calling it a racist symbol of oppression and claiming it is unconstitutional and illegal.
The statue will be moved, at private cost, to the Cross Keys Battlefield in Harrisonburg, Va., which is privately owned.
The move comes four years after the city of Baltimore removed all four of its Confederate statues following the deadly Charlottesville riot which was started by right-wing agitators over a Confederate statue. The city gave the monuments to different Confederate cemeteries in the region.
With News Wire Services
