Until 2017, there was a statue of Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the United States, on the lawn of the State House. The statue was erected in 1872. The statue of Taney, a Marylander, was controversial because of Taney's support for slavery and his authorship of the U.S. Supreme Court decision in "Dred Scott v. Sandford" (1857), which upheld the denial of citizenship to African Americans. As a result, a movement in support of removing the statue emerged. At first, the State House Trust—made up of the governor, the speaker of the state house, the president of the state senate, and the chair of the Maryland Historical Trust Board of Trustees—responded by adding interpretive plaques "explaining the controversy over his divisive opinion and its place in the evolution of the nation's stance toward slavery." The Trust also added a statue of Marshall on Lawyers Mall, and agreed in 2016 to place statues of abolitionists Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass in the State House. In the wake of the Charlottesville car attack in 2017, House Speaker Michael E. Busch called for the removal of the Taney statue, as did Governor Larry Hogan a day later. It was removed just after midnight on August 18, 2017.