Someone poured red paint over a Confederate monument in Bolton Hill, defacing the 114-year-old statue during a weekend in which violence erupted at a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va.
Baltimore police had not received reports of the vandalism, a spokesman said Monday afternoon. But red paint had drenched the statue of a dying Confederate soldier embraced by a winged figure of Glory. The soldier grips a Confederate battle flag, also smeared with red paint.
More than 1,000 people marched through Baltimore Sunday in opposition to the violence and racism at the Virginia rally. The white nationalist rally turned deadly after a man rammed his car into a crowd of counter protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer. Police charged the alleged driver, James Fields Jr., 20, in the killing.
The violence reignited debate over Confederate monuments in Maryland. Mayor Catherine Pugh said she has reached out to two contractors about removing the rebel monuments in Baltimore. House Speaker Michael E. Busch said it’s time to remove from the lawn of the Maryland State House the statue of former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Roger B. Taney, who wrote the infamous 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to black people.
The confederate statue vandalized with red paint was erected by the state chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy in February 1903. The inscription reads “Gloria Victis,” meaning “glory to the vanquished.”
The monument stands on Mount Royal Avenue near Mosher Street.
In 2015, after a white man killed nine black church members in South Carolina, the monument was tagged with “Black Lives Matter” in yellow spray paint.
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