By BRIAN WITTE Associated Press – ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — At a time when states are debating the removal of Confederate monuments, Maryland unveiled bronze statues of famed abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass during a ceremony Monday night in the Maryland State House.
The life-sized statues were dedicated during a special joint session of the Maryland General Assembly in the Old House Chamber, the room where slavery was abolished in the state in 1864.
The statues aren’t the only recent examples of the state taking steps to reflect its rich black history.
The painting of Verda Welcome, who was elected to the state Senate in 1962, is the first portrait of a black person to adorn the Maryland’s Senate walls.
In 2017, the state removed a statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice and Maryland native who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans.
