Leaders still debating Confederate monuments
TALLAHASSEE — Spurred by racial violence in Virginia, lawmakers in Florida are once again grappling with Confederate monuments erected at the state and U.S. Capitols.
Although the GOP-controlled Legislature has moved to take down symbols of the Confederacy in recent years, the violent rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., around a statue of Gen. Robert E. Lee earlier this month has thrust the spotlight on two prominent Florida memorials that remain standing.
A monument to Leon County’s Confederate soldiers on the grounds of Florida’s Old Capitol building in Tallahassee is a longtime source of scorn for black lawmakers. And a statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby stands in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, despite a 2016 law that aimed to replace him.
State Sen. Perry Thurston, DPlantation, chairman of the Florida Legislative Black Caucus, said the statues aren’t just innocuous symbols.
“When you start seeing Nazis and Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists using these monuments as a rallying cry, it lets you know that we do, as a nation, have a ways to go,” Thurston said.
Gov. Rick Scott, who condemned the white supremacists in Charlottesville but didn’t rebuke President Donald Trump for saying “both sides” were to blame for the violence, has sought to remain neutral over the fate of the statues, saying it’s up to the Legislature to decide. The Confederate monument is under the control of the Florida Historic Capitol Museum Council, whose members are appointed by the Legislature, according to Scott’s office.
“We’ll leave decisions about the Historic Capitol Museum up to the Legislature,” Scott spokeswoman Lauren Schenone wrote in an email.
But the Legislature disputes that.
“The Historic Capitol is not in possession of any ownership papers regarding the memorial, nor is it part of any exhibit that they own or maintain,” Katie Betta, spokeswoman for Senate President Joe Negron, R-Stuart, wrote in an email.
Democrats have slammed his response. U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, D-Weston, called for Scott to call a special session to replace the statue of Kirby in Washington, something Scott has said he isn’t going to do.
“These monuments should be removed because we should not celebrate literal anti-American ideology or any ideology based on the oppression of any group of people,” said Chris King, a Winter Park businessman and Democratic candidate for governor. “And to those who say these monuments are needed to preserve our history, I say we don’t need memorials celebrating this dark time in our history.”
Florida lawmakers have been debating what to do with Confederate symbols since 2015, after a white supremacist killed nine people in a Charleston, S.C., church. The events in Charlottesville reignited the issue.
The Florida Senate redrew its seal to remove the Confederate battle flag. The Senate also removed a mural that prominently featured the Confederate battle flag during a renovation last year, and the artwork was donated to the Taylor County Historical Society.
“The fact that we were making these decisions and moving on doing the right thing prior to Charlottesville lets you know that people are thinking about it, they’re concerned about it,” Thurston said. “But it’s time now to move forward and finalize the decisions.”
The debate over the memory of the Civil War is likely to continue into the 2018 legislative session that begins in January.
Thurston has filed a bill (SJR 184) to replace Kirby with a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, an African-American teacher and civil rights activist who founded Bethune-Cookman College.
Lawmakers passed a bill in 2016, signed by Scott, that set up a panel to recommend replacements, and Bethune was one of three suggestions. Marjory Stoneman Douglas, the environmentalist and writer, and George Washington Jenkins Jr., the founder of Publix, were the other two.
But a bill to name a replacement stalled this year when Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, chairman of a panel overseeing the bill, suggested other names, including Walt Disney. Plakon voted against the 2016 bill and said he wants the Legislature to start again on how to replace Kirby.
“My preference as one member of the Legislature would be to hit the reset button and take a fresh look … at both statues,” Plakon said.
News Service of Florida contributed to this report. grohrer@orlandosentinel.com