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Until Nov. 1, 1864, the day Maryland lawmakers officially approved emancipation, fugitive slaves Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass could not legally enter their home state of Maryland, let alone the State House in Annapolis.
On Monday, the two abolitionists received a place of honor in that building. Statues of the two leaders were unveiled and dedicated during a joint legislative session held outside the Old House Chamber, where slavery in Maryland was formally abolished.
The installation of the statues of Tubman and Douglass marks the end of a nearly four-year-long push to honor the pair of abolitionists in the State House building, which still features controversial statues and artwork in an era of increasing scrutiny of such displays.
Until 2017, a statue of Roger B. Taney, the U.S. Supreme Court justice who wrote the 1857 Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery and denied citizenship to African Americans, sat outside the Capitol. Lawmakers voted to remove the statue days after the death of a woman in Charlottesville, Virginia, who was among a crowd condemning an event where hundreds of white nationalists protested the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee
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