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Baltimoreans Continue To Weigh City's Decision To Remove Confederate Statues

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- President Trump is once again raising eyebrows with tweets, this time about the ongoing controversy about the ongoing controversy over confederate monuments.

Crews removed four Baltimore monuments overnight Tuesday into Wednesday: the Confederate Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Mount Royal Avenue, the Confederate Women's Monument on West University Parkway, the Roger B. Taney Monument on Mount Vernon Place and the Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson Monument in the Wyman Park Dell.

That decision helped spark the nationwide debate. For now, the statues are tucked away under tarps at an undisclosed city lot, and being guarded by police.

Now Baltimoreans wonder -- what should happen to them next?

The toppling Thursday afternoon of a papier-mâché statue that was left behind by activists on one of the city's now-removed monuments in Wyman Park is another reminder of what has become a tense nationwide debate.

The president tweeted Thursday morning:

"Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!"

Some locals disagree with his sentiments.

"These monuments were never a pure or a true history," says UMBC professor Anne Rubin. "They're one representation... it's a statement of community values, I think, to remove the statue from the landscape. To say 'This is no longer, if it ever even was, who were are as a population.'"

"This is our history, as ugly as it is," Susan Badder told WJZ's Kimberly Eiten. "Setting up a bunch of confederate monuments is sort of like slapping everybody in the face again."

"These are not history, these are propaganda," Andy Hinz said.

Rubin says the sins of the past should be documented in history books, not bronze.

"Rather than rely on statues, rely on teaching, rely on public events, rely on other forms of public memory."

Mayor Catherine Pugh says the monuments will stay right where they are until a decision on their next location is made. She says there has been interest from at least one university, and from Maryland's confederate cemeteries.

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