Lake now says Confederate statue no longer welcome
Lake County commissioners retreated Tuesday from a pledge to bring the statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith from Washington D.C. to the historic courthouse in Tavares.
The board agreed to ask the state to find a more appropriate place for the bronze likeness of the Florida-born general who lived post-war in Tennessee.
It’s unclear if the apparent change-of-heart will persuade the independent Historical Society to give up on the idea of exhibiting the 4-ton statue and pedestal that has long been displayed in the U.S. Capitol’s National Statuary Hall.
The board’s decision, if approved at its next meeting, would reverse a controversial 2019 vote that approved installing the statue in the county’s old courthouse, where the not-forprofit museum occupies the first floor. The previous vote outraged many people who said the building was the wrong place to display a Confederate relic.
The courthouse was the chief venue for one of Florida’s most notorious cases of racial injustice: the Groveland Four.
Two of the four, all young black men, were beaten by deputies in the basement into confessing to raping a 17-year-old white girl in 1949. Their trial was held upstairs.
“I do think it could be a win-win for everyone if we take the position that a museum is the appropriate location,” board chair Leslie Campione said of the statue’s eventual home. “Let’s find one that is more directly related to General Smith” than Lake County.
Smith has no direct ties to Lake County. The commission instructed its staff