Lake County mayors appeal to DeSantis to block statue from coming to Tavares
Eight Lake County mayors want Gov. Ron DeSantis to block a Confederate general’s statue from coming to Tavares.
They signed a letter to DeSantis pleading with him to “use any and all powers granted to you” to prevent the bronze effigy of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith from moving to Lake County, where the historical museum’s curator intends to display it in the county’s historic courthouse once it’s evicted from the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
It is being replaced in the Capitol by a statue of African-American educator and activist Mary McLeod Bethune as one of two representatives of memorable Floridians.
Florida’s other figure is physician and scientist John Gorrie, who is considered the father of air conditioning and refrigeration.
Bringing the Confederate figure to Lake County “would create a negative and hurtful message in our community,” according to the letter which born the signatures of the mayors of Clermont, Eustis, Groveland, Leesburg, Mascotte, Minneola, Mount Dora and Tavares.
“Each of our cities have passed resolutions in opposition of the statue relocation to Lake County,” the letter says.
Clermont Mayor Gail Ash, a transplanted New Yorker representing Lake County’s largest city, said, “Why bring this here now and what it represents?”
A state panel last year considered proposals to house the Smith statue when it leaves Washington, D.C., and chose a pitch by Lake County Historical Museum curator Bob Grenier to move it to the Tavares museum . It’s unclear when that will be. The 9-foot marble statue of Bethune, under construction in Italy, is expected to arrive at the Capitol in 2020.
Grenier previously said he didn’t seek opinions from black residents before bidding for the Confederate figure.
He didn’t return messages seeking comment about the mayors’ letter.
Mount Dora Mayor Nick Girone was the last mayor to sign the letter, putting his signature on the document Tuesday after soliciting views of others City Council members.
The mayors’ letter points out the proposed destination for the statue is Lake County’s historic courthouse, where notoriously racist Sheriff Willis McCall reigned for 28 years. It also was the venue for arguably Lake’s most infamous episode of racial injustice, the prosecution of the Groveland Four, four young black men accused of raping a 17-year-old white woman in 1949.
“The bitter irony is the proposed location is a museum located in the same building where 70 years ago the Groveland Four had their lives and reputations ruined,” the letter said. “The decision to move this statue was made by a small group who neither answers to or represents the public. We, eight mayors, represent 146,165 residents.”
They also represent a majority of Lake’s 14 cities.
Representatives for DeSantis didn’t respond Friday to a request for comment.
A protest march, organized by the Rev. Michael Watkins and others opposed to the relocation of the statue, is planned for Aug. 10 in Tavares.
They’ll protest a figure born in St. Augustine to a slave-owning family. Smith left the state for military school at age 12 and had few ties to Florida as an adult.
He was the first native Floridian appointed to West Point but resigned from the U.S. Army to take up arms for the Confederacy.
After the Civil War, he worked at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., and is buried in the university cemetery.
DeSantis sent a formal request July 10 to the architect of the U.S. Capitol to substitute the Bethune statue for the Smith likeness.
As part of the request, the governor noted the Smith statue would be relocated to the Lake County museum as a long-term loan from the Florida Department of State.
Bethune will become the first African-American woman honored by a state in the national hall. She founded what became Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach and later worked as an adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt.
State lawmakers voted in 2016 to replace the Smith statue, amid a nationwide backlash against Confederate symbols that followed the 2015 shooting deaths of nine black worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C.