'Racist Anthem' Spray-Painted On Baltimore Francis Scott Key Statue

BALTIMORE (WJZ) -- A statue of Francis Scott Key, a slave owner, in the Bolton Hill area of Baltimore was vandalized overnight Wednesday.

Someone spray-painted "racist anthem" on the side of the statue, which honors the writer of the Star Spangled Banner.

This comes just weeks after the city dismantled and removed four Confederate monuments.

The Baltimore Sun reports that these words from Key's original poem were painted on the ground nearby: "No refuge could save, Hireling or slave, From terror of flight, Or gloom of grave." Found in the third verse of the Anthem.

"This is immature people we should be learning from this not destroying it," Russell Henninger said.

"The monument is not exclusively focusing on him as much as it's focusing on the War of 1812," Juarez Lee-Shelton said.

The statue is the latest to come under fire in Baltimore.

Last month, masked vandals took a sledgehammer to a Christopher Columbus statue.

All of it comes in response to a deadly protest in Charlottesville, Virginia last month, when white nationalist protested the removal of a Jefferson Davis monument.

"Not everybody is on the same side of these arguments it doesn't give anyone the right to destroy property," Baltimore Police spokesperson T.J. Smith said.

Others wonder which ones will be targeted next. Police say they have little information to go on and say they're not sure if the same person could be behind the vandalism at each of the monuments.

Police are urging anyone with information to give them a call.

According to city records, the statue was dedicated in 1911.

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