Maryland officials remove statue of Dred Scott justice overnight

Maryland officials removed a controversial statue in Annapolis overnight Friday following the violent clashes over removing Confederate monuments in Charlottesville, Va.

Workers began removing the statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Taney, who ruled in favor of slaveholders in the infamous Dred Scott case, at about 12:20 a.m. Friday, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The decision comes after Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) called for the statue to be removed days ago. 

{mosads}“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 this week.

“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,” he added.

The statue will be moved to a Maryland State Archives facility, the Sun reported.

The 1857 Dred Scott v. Sanford decision, considered among the worst in U.S. history, held that slaves and former slaves had no right to citizenship and no legal standing in court.

The move follows the city of Baltimore removing all four of its Confederate statues from state-owned grounds in an overnight operation early Thursday morning after the Charlottesville violence.

Those protests over the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee left one woman dead and dozens injured after a car allegedly driven by a man attending the white supremacist rally was driven into a crowd of counterprotesters.