Statue of Maine’s Only Supreme Court Justice Is Rotting in a Vassalboro Junkyard

Following the Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots of 2020, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Melville W. Fuller – the only Mainer to ever sit on the court — became a casualty of the left-wing mania that continues to tear down historical markers and statues across the U.S.

Now, Fuller’s statue, or what’s left of it, is rotting away at a junkyard in Vassalboro following its removal in February 2022.

Kennebec County Commissioners ordered the removal of the statue of Chief Justice Fuller, a Democrat who was born in Augusta, in 2021, because of a controversial ruling on segregation.

The statue was removed overnight by its original donor, Robert Fuller, Jr., a relative of the chief justice.

The statue’s new location was unknown until Fuller Jr. revealed that it is being housed at a concrete company, WH Green & Sons in Vassalboro.

The concrete company’s yard is more akin to a junkyard, filled with scrap metal, rusting cars, and graffiti.

The statue’s engraved granite base was covered with snow and left next to an abandoned pickup truck.

Fuller’s statue, which stood outside the Kennebec County Courthouse in Augusta from 2013 to 2021.

When activists and the Kennebec County Commissioners decided Fuller’s statue ought to be removed, they pointed to Fuller’s role in the Supreme Court’s Plessy V. Ferguson decision.

That 1896 decision ruled that racial segregation did not violate the Constitution, and could continue. Plessy would later be overruled in the 1954 decision Brown v. Board of Education.

“This court ruling helped to create decades of racial segregation and I don’t believe that we in Kennebec County should convey to others in any way that we support that court decision,” said Commissioner Patsy Crockett, who voted for the statue’s removal.

Nominated by President Grover Cleveland, Fuller served on the U.S. Supreme Court from 1888 to his death in 1910. During his tenure on the Court, Fuller struggled to unite a fractious court, presiding over 64 five-to-four votes.

Fuller Jr. had the statue removed quietly overnight to a previously undisclosed location because he feared that further publicity could lead to vandalism, citing incendiary remarks from a Central Maine reporter who called for the statue’s destruction.

“I feared those remarks would encourage vandalism, and any advance publicity regarding the statue’s removal might cause public unrest,” said Fuller Jr., in a letter to Central Maine.

Fuller’s statue became controversial at the same left-wing activists and rioters were vandalizing statues across the country.

The BLM riots, incited following the death of George Floyd, succeeded in destroying, or demanding the removal of hundreds of statues, including statues of former U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt.

The movement targeted significant parts of American history, particularly the history of the South, with many monuments of Confederate soldiers being removed or destroyed.

Statues of Christopher Columbus and the Catholic Saint Junipero Serra were also targeted, along with many other historical figures.

The Biden Administration also plans on removing the Reconciliation monument, dedicated to the Confederate soldiers who died during the Civil War by December 22.

The removal of Fuller’s statue motivated local author Douglas Rooks to pen a new biography of the former Chief Justice.

Rook’s book, Calm Command, seeks to bring Fuller’s positive contributions to history into the foreground without ignoring his flaws.

Here are a few additional photos of where the statue base was discovered.