Baltimore mayor is moving forward with Confederate monuments removal

Catherine Pugh speaks to a crowd on April 25, 2016, in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

(AP) -- The mayor of Baltimore says she has contacted two contractors about removing the city's Confederate monuments.

Mayor Catherine Pugh told the Baltimore Sun on Monday that she intends to "move forward with the removal of the statues."

Pugh said she wants the statues to be placed in Confederate cemeteries elsewhere in Maryland.

Pugh says she's keeping mum on when the monuments would come down in an effort to prevent the kind violence seen in Virginia on Saturday when white nationalists came to Charlottesville to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A commission appointed by former Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake recommended removing two of four Confederate-era monuments.

Pugh says her office is "looking at all four of them."

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