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respect” and were not included in the Founding Fathers’ declaration that “all men are created
equal.”

The Sun called the installation of the statue “an event of great interest to our people” and noted
that the Dred Scott decision, which Maryland judges largely eschewed, was “in strict agreement
with the constitution” and that Taney was “brave, pure and learned.”

(That’s in sharp contrast to the paper’s position
today. When the Taney statue was removed in
2017, along with three Confederate
monuments, The Sun’s editorial board said
they never should have been erected in the first
place.)

As the 1800s gave way to the 1900s,
Democrats were in control of Maryland’s
government, and they fought hard to
disenfranchise Black voters, who largely
supported the Republican Party at the time,
introducing amendments over several years
meant to prevent Black people from voting.

On Page 5 of the Oct. 31, 1909, morning
edition of The Sun, in large type that spread
across two columns, the paper made its case 12 Nov 1887, Sat The Baltimore Sun (Baltimore,
for why the “suffrage amendment” on the table Maryland) Newspapers.com
that year, which would have required voters to
pass a sort of writing test before being granted
the right to cast a ballot, should be ratified. Unlike today’s efforts to disenfranchise minority
voters, there is absolutely no attempt to code the language of the argument. It comes out
swinging against Black Marylanders and never lets up,
calling them ignorant, thriftless and a threat to “better
political conditions.”

And, in case that didn’t make the point, the paper
followed up on Election Day with a “last word” for the
“intelligent white voter.” It urged him to “purify the
electorate” by voting for the suffrage amendment: “You
can make Maryland a white man’s State, and make
each and every white man’s vote count instead of being
killed by an illiterate negro’s ballot.”

‘The encroachment of the negroes’

31 Oct 1909, Sun The Baltimore Sun The next year, the paper wrote glowingly in its news
(Baltimore, Maryland) Newspapers.com pages of a segregation ordinance — “preventing

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