Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
State lawmakers push to bury our Confederate past
The national dialogue on racism may have turned to current acts of bigotry, but South Florida Democrats are concentrating on burying Florida’s slave-holding past.
They are pushing for a memorial to Florida’s slave population, the removal of Confederate monuments on public lands and the ending of three Confederate-related state holidays.
“This topic of how we celebrate history,
history that might be extremely painful, has come to the forefront in the last couple years and really boiled to the surface in the last year,” said state Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, who’s sponsoring the bill to end Confederate state holidays.
In the 1860 Census, Florida had 61,745 slaves.That’s less than any other slaveholding state except Delaware, which had just 1,798. But the relatively small number of slaves in Florida reflects a small overall population.
Florida back then was still very much a wilderness. Its slaves represented 44 percent of the population, which is in line with the percentage in other slave states such as Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.
Slaves were technically freed in Florida with the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, but practically, the ongoing Civil War meant liberation did not occur until the war’s end more than two years later.
The slave memorial would be built at the Capitol complex in Tallahassee, under a bill filed by state Rep. Kionne McGhee, DMiami. There’s no dollar figure attached to the project, as it’s still unknown what form it would take.
The Government Operations and Technology Appropriations Subcommittee unanimously approved the memorial Wednesday without debate. The bill has one more committee to clear before being ready for a vote on the House floor when the legislative session begins Jan. 9. A similar bill in the Senate has not yet had a hearing.
Other efforts to address Florida’s slave-holding past are just getting off the ground. State Rep. Shevrin Jones, D-West Park, still lacks a Senate sponsor for his effort to remove Confederate monuments on public lands, but he’s convinced the time is now.
“When you know better, you do better,” Jones said. “Now that everyone is becoming knowledgeable on what these individuals stood for at this divided time in our country, a lot of people are asking, is this what we want, to continue to honor individuals who enslaved, raped and lynched African Americans? Is this how we want to honor them, or can we honor them in some place like a museum?”
Jones’ bill would require Confederate memorials that sit on property owned or leased by the state to be moved to the Museum of Florida History in Tallahassee. Legislative staff are still coming up with locations for all of these monuments, but Jones said there are at least 30 of them on public land in Florida.
Perhaps the most recognizable location is on the grounds of the Capitol complex in Tallahassee, where a marble obelisk recognizes “the heroic patriotism of the men of Leon County who perished in the Civil War of 1861-1865.”
Said Jones: “These individuals didn’t do any good. I can’t honor someone over what you’ve done to my ancestors. I’d love to know more about you, but you shouldn’t be honored in a public place.”
No more holidays honoring Confederate ways
Among the 20 official Florida holidays are three honoring the Confederacy — Confederate Memorial Day (April 26) and the birthdays of Robert E. Lee (Jan. 19) and Jefferson Davis (June 3).
Like many of the Confederate memorials dotting the Southern landscape, these holidays were promoted soon after the end of the Civil War by organizations such as the Daughters of the Confederacy.
Moskowitz and state Sen. Lauren Book, D-Plantation, are trying to end that, filing identical bills to remove the designations.
“The state should not be sanctioning or promoting these holidays,” Moskowitz said. “Should these holidays be treated as on par with Martin Luther King Day or Veterans Day or Memorial Day? They just do not belong on that list.”
The holidays are not as celebrated in Florida as they are in some other Southern states — Alabama and Mississippi close state offices for Confederate Memorial Day.
But other Southern states are ending the practice. Georgia ended observance of Confederate Memorial Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday in 2015. The state now observes an unnamed “state holiday” in April to continue giving public employees a day off.
Of the 20 state holidays in Florida, only eight are paid holidays that state employees get off, according to the Florida Department of Management Services. The 12 other holidays include rarely observed ones such as the date of Florida’s discovery, known as Pascua Florida, and Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, as well as commonly known holidays such as Columbus Day and Flag Day.
One last statue
And the Florida Legislature still has unfinished business in Washington, D.C., as well, with a yearslong attempt to replace a statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith in the National Statuary Hall. Each state is allowed two statues in the hall, and Smith is one of Florida’s. (The other is air conditioning pioneer John Gorrie.)
The Florida Legislature voted in 2016 to remove the Smith statue, setting up a process to find a Floridian to replace him. A committee established for the purpose came up with AfricanAmerican educator Mary McLeod Bethune, conservationist and author Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Publix founder George Washington Jenkins. Of the three, the committee recommended Bethune, who founded what eventually became Bethune-Cookman University.
But in the 2017 legislative session, the House favored Douglas while the Senate went for Bethune. And the House’s bill died after state Rep. Scott Plakon, R-Longwood, refused to hear it in his committee and suggested a statue of Walt Disney instead.
This year, Bethune seems on the fast track to clear both the House and the Senate. While most bills get three committee hearings before a full vote, the Bethune bills have only two committee hearings in either chamber, a sign of support from House and Senate leadership.
Passage would give the National Statuary Hall its first African-American woman and replace a Confederate general with the daughter of former slaves.