Despite a recent report, Mayor Stephanie Rawling-Blake said four confederate monuments that currently stand on Baltimore City owned proprieties will have to stay, at least for now.
A special commission report released Wednesday suggests removing and relocating two statues. The recommendations include removing and offering the Lee Jackson in Wyman Park Dell to the National Park Service to be placed in Chancellorsville Battlefied and removing the Roger B. Taney Monument from Mt. Vernon Place.
The commission did not come to a recommendation for the other two statues, the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument and the Confederate Women's Monument.
"Everyone can say: 'you should remove them all and put them in one big confederate monument park'," Rawlings-Blake said at a press conference. "But, who's going to pay for it?"
Since the city doesn't have the money to foot the bill and no one has offered funding for the project, the mayor came up with a storm term solution. She requested signs be installed explaining what the four monuments mean to the history of Baltimore.
"I don't think any of the commission members were interested in erasing or rewriting history, but we should work to interpret it for today's context," Rawlings-Blake said.
As to what the interpretive signage will say, the commission said it will have to review it.
"I think it's about placing the monuments into some sort of context," commission chair Aaron Bryant said. "So, you look at larger historical context of the Civil War and these monuments, but then looking more specifically at how these monuments represent Baltimore City's history and where we were as a city at the time the monuments were created and installed."
Rawlings-Blake said the signage won't be a permanent solution, but it's a practical option to address the polarizing topic. No date has been set for when the signs will be installed.
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