Confederate memorials remain, but days may be numbered
Even though Orlando plans to move the “Johnny Reb” statue of a Confederate soldier from Lake Eola Park to Greenwood Cemetery, Central Florida still has several places with Civil War names and imagery.
Stonewall Jackson Middle School, named for one of Lee’s commanders, lies on Stonewall Jackson Road in Orlando. Roads named for other Confederate generals cut through places like Azalea Park and Lake Nona. And a Confederate memorial still sits in a public park in downtown St. Cloud, a monument that dates back to the not-so-distant year of 2006.
Historians and opponents say Confederate monuments — but not Rebel-named roads — might not survive in Central Florida and across the nation at least in part because of America’s changing demographics.
“As Florida becomes more diverse, ethnically, culturally, racially, [it brings] an internal shift, an ongoing evolution” in views of the Civil War, said Kevin Levin, an author
of several books on the war and an expert on Confederate memorials.
The decision by Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer on May 15 to remove “Johnny Reb,’’ placed at Lake Eola in 1917 by a local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, follows the trend.
South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol in 2015 after the Charleston church shootings, while New Orleans removed statues of several Confederate generals this past month.
The Lake Eola statue was one of the dozens of Confederate memorials that went up between 1880 and 1930 in places as far-flung as Montana. The move to memorialize what some call “the Lost Cause” was its own revision of history, Levin said, ignoring the role of slavery and white supremacy.
“[It] was a powerful tool for reshaping how the country remembers the past,” Levin said. “It was important to them how the next generation remembered the past, so they made a rallying point for multiple generations. At least, that’s what they hoped for.”
Meanwhile, lynchings and events such as the 1920 Ocoee riot, where a white mob drove blacks out of the west Orange County town, aren’t memorialized, said Julian Chambliss, history chair and Africa & African-American Studies coordinator at Rollins College.
“Ultimately, I believe the [Johnny Reb] statue should be sent to a museum,” Chambliss said. “This is the place where the history … of the creation of the ‘Lost Cause’ mythology that motivated the statue can be explored and critiqued.”
In St. Cloud, city officials said they were surprised that a monument to Confederate soldiers was placed in its public Veterans Park as recently as 2006. It features quotes by Lee and Jackson, an outline of a Confederate battle flag and lists 25 names of Civil War veterans.
“Current Parks and Recreation management staff were not working for the city in April 2006,” spokeswoman Sandra Ramirez said, adding the city has no recorded complaints about it.
Al Massey, a commander of the Jacob Summerlin Camp 1516 of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who erected the St. Cloud memorial, said the monument “is to honor Confederate veterans born in Osceola County. Nothing more, nothing less. … We’re trying to honor their good name against all that’s going on in our country, with all the revisionist history and false history and people spewing all of that.”
St. Cloud was settled in large part by about 4,000 retired Union soldiers who bought lots in a colony created there after the war.
Massey, though, said the idea of St. Cloud as a Yankee town was just “a sales gimmick, just like they would sell BVL [Buenaventura Lakes] and Poinciana to people in Puerto Rico.’’
In Orange County, Kirby Smith Road — named for the same Confederate general whose statue the state is attempting to remove from the U.S. Capitol — winds through the Lake Nona area. Maury Road in College Park was named for Matthew Maury, founder of the Confederate Navy. Other streets with the same name as Confederates, including Mosby Street in Wedgefield, Kershaw Drive outside Winter Garden and Pickett Avenue in Pine Hills, have origins that are unclear.
As opposed to moving a statue, renaming a road would create “numerous undesired and unneeded burdens” on residents and businesses, said Jon Weiss, Orange County development director. “At this time, we are not looking at changing any road names.”
Maury Road runs past the former Lee Middle School, renamed College Park Middle School by the school board in February. The change at the school, currently 60 percent black after being whites-only when it opened in 1956, came at the urging of parents and others in the neighborhood.
But so far, there has been no such push to change the name of Stonewall Jackson Middle School, which opened in 1964 south of Azalea Park and is now 75 percent Hispanic.
School Board member Daryl Flynn said any name change would have to go through “the same exact process Lee Middle School went through.”
The Lee decision came after a year and a half of study that included community surveys and advisory councils.
“If it came up through [the community], we’d be willing to hear ideas,” Flynn said. “So far, there haven’t been any comments to me from the school community.”
Carlos Guzman, a real estate developer and president of the Puerto Rican Leadership Council, said the name makes it difficult to raise money for the school in the Hispanic community, and he wants it changed.
“It’s going to happen,” Guzman said. “Who’s going to be the leader to do it? Because it’s not going to be a school board member.”