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Amid the national debate over Confederate symbols, the Baltimore City Council is considering renaming Robert E. Lee Park.

Under a bill proposed at Monday’s meeting, the park named after the famed Confederate general would be renamed Lake Roland Park.

According to WBAL-TV, the park is located in Baltimore County, but the city has to approve the renaming because it has title to the land.

In the wake of the Charleston shooting and call to remove the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s state house grounds, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake named a commission to study whether to rename Confederate symbols in Baltimore City. SRB previously indicated she would support renaming the park.

Stephen Babcock

Stephen Babcock is the editor of Technical.ly Baltimore and an editor-at-large of Baltimore Fishbowl.

8 replies on “Baltimore Considers Changing Name of Robert E. Lee Park”

  1. We need to find more productive things to do with our time than this. Shall we rename the Patuxent River since we exploited Native Americans? Let’s take down the Columbus memorial in Harbor East? Ugh!

  2. Comparing Robert E. Lee Park to the Confederate flag is not “apples to apples” at best, and at worst, a diversion from the problems that really plague our beloved Baltimore; and I agree with Steve, the whole conversation risks being a massive waste of time and resources. Why not rather spend that time and those resources trying to halt the runaway murder rate in Baltimore City, or to find creative and helpful solutions to mitigate the fact that 70% of households in the city are run by a single parent, or to engage and mentor our city’s children, who have been abandoned to sub-par schools and pressure from gangs? Sigh…

  3. I do believe that the sooner we remove the Confederate names on our public lands, the sooner the country will be able to come together. Calling a park Robert E. Lee is just too confusing. Sure Lee was a fine general and a fine college president, but he represents the wrong message — slavery was dead wrong and he fought to extend slavery. Honoring Lee is just too confusing. Make sure the history books tell his story, but don’t honor him for a very mixed-up career. All of his soldiers have passed on; they won’t mind taking his name down. That war is over and should remain over!

    1. What is too confusing? Robert E. Lee has nothing to do with Charleston or Baltimore’s recent unrest. In fact he built Fort Carroll just outside of the Key Bridge. Shall we take that down too? Get over it.

    2. Well after Middle School comes High School and the courses are a little more in depth and difficult, then College and they should be a little more in depth and difficult. That explains why other people don’t see history quite the way you do, you see we went a little further in life, but I guess still having a Middle School vision of the world makes life simpler.

  4. If you knew your history and had studied Lee, you would know that he was faithful to his state of Virginia and his God. He was deeply troubled and conflucted by the conflict and war. Washington wsd a slave owner. Are we going to rename the Washington Monument as well?

  5. It is a crime to try and erase our history good or bad it is the history. All Soldiers who fought in the War Between the States were and are considered Veterans of the United States. Therefore by removing them one is removing a Veteran of the US.

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