The plan to fund a monument to honor Black Marylanders who fought in the Revolutionary War has been approved by the state’s Board of Public Works.
The Board of Public Works is made up of Governor Wes Moore, Treasurer Dereck Davis and Comptroller Brooke Lierman.
At Wednesday’s meeting, Lt. Governor Aruna Miller sat in for Moore, and spoke briefly before the vote on the project was taken. Miller noted the monument would be placed on the grounds of the Maryland State House saying, “these are Black patriots who fought for freedom that they were denied.”
Miller said the project is “about justice long overdue.”
She also noted the monument would be “the first memorial on any of the country’s 50 statehouse grounds that fought in the Revolutionary War.”
The monument would be placed on the side of the statehouse that previously featured the statue of Roger Brooke Taney, the nation’s fifth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.
Taney is remembered for writing the majority opinion in the 1857 Dred Scott case, which ruled Black people — whether free or enslaved — could not be considered citizens of the United States.
In 2015, then-former Maryland state delegate Jolene Ivey wrote on her Facebook page that the Taney statue sat, “like a turd in front of our State House.”
The Taney statue was removed from the grounds in 2017.
Maryland’s then-governor Larry Hogan called the decision to remove the Taney statue “the right thing to do” following protests over Confederate statues in Charlottesville that ended with the death of a woman when a driver drove into a crowd of demonstrators.
According to the Department of General Services proposal for the monument, the sculptor Branly Cadet is slated to create the monument. Cadet has created public statues of baseball great Jackie Robinson and civil rights activist and legislator Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.
The BPW approved $311,500 for the project. The proposal is timed so the monument could be completed by July 2026, the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
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