Confederate Symbols Removed From Florida In 2020

FLORIDA — More Confederate monuments were removed in 2020 across the United States than during the five previous years combined, the Southern Poverty Law Center said in its most recent “Whose Heritage?” report that tracks public displays related to the Confederacy.

Ninety-four of the 168 Confederate symbols removed or renamed nationwide in 2020 were monuments, the report found. Fifty-eight were removed from 2015 to 2019.

In Florida, 10 Confederate symbols were removed in 2020, according to the Law Center. Another tracking site said 54 monuments remain in the state.

Monuments taken down in Florida in the past year include:

• Florida Confederate Soldiers Memorial in Jacksonville (pedestal remains)
• Confederate Monument in St. Augustine
• Cow Cavalry Monument in Plant City
• Gen. William Loring Monument in St. Augustine
• J.J. Finley Elementary School in Gainesville (renamed Carolyn Beatrice Parker Elementary School)
• Confederate Monument (location not given)
• Stonewall Jackson Middle School in Orlando (renamed Roberto Clemente Middle School)
• Robert E. Lee Monument in Fort Myers (pedestal remains)
• Confederate Monument in Pensacola (location not given)
• Lee Square in Pensacola (renamed “Florida Square”)

The locations of some of the removed monuments and other symbols were specified by the Orlando Sentinel.

Among the remaining memorials are an obelisk outside the Florida Historic Capitol in Tallahassee.

But the state is also distancing itself from the Confederate past.

A bill to create a Florida Slavery Memorial on the Capitol grounds was approved by lawmakers in 2018. Last year, legislators earmarked $400,000 for its completion and installation.

And a statue of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, the last surviving Confederate general when he died in 1893, will no longer represent the state in the U.S. Capitol. Instead it will be replaced by a statue of Mary McLeod Bethune, a child of former slaves who founded what is now Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

Lecia Brooks, chief of staff for the Law Center, called 2020 a “transformative” year in the movement to remove Confederate symbols nationally.

“Over the course of seven months, more symbols of hate were removed from public property than in the preceding four years combined,” Brooks said in a statement.

The Law Center began tracking the movement to take the monuments down in 2015, when a white supremacist entered a South Carolina church and killed nine Black parishioners.

Virginia by far saw the most Confederate symbols removed in 2020 with 71, the Law Center’s report found. The states with the next highest number are North Carolina with 24, and Alabama and Texas, both with 12.

While the greatest concentration of symbols remains in former Confederate and border states, many exist in Northern states and states formed after the Civil War. California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Washington, Idaho and Montana all house a small number of monuments.

Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson are the top Confederates with statues, roads and schools named in their honor, according to BeenVerified.com.

Nathan Bedford Forrest, the Confederate general who was the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, has the sixth highest number of monuments.

Brooks praised Virginia, which changed its preservation law and, according to Brooks, “led by example” by removing so many Confederate symbols in 2020. Preservation laws in several other Southern states — including Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina — still exist and prohibit individual communities from removing certain displays.

The movement to remove these symbols from public spaces became part of the national reckoning on racial injustice following the killing last May of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck for several minutes.

All but one of the 168 symbols that were removed last year came after Floyd’s death. The symbol that was removed before May 30 was Virginia’s decision to replace Lee-Jackson Day with Election Day in April.

The Law Center considers public Confederate symbols as any government buildings, monuments and statues, plaques, markers, schools, parks, counties, cities, military property and streets or highways named after anyone associated with the Confederacy.

The organization said 2,100 Confederate symbols remain in the country into 2021. Monuments account for 704 of the symbols, the Law Center said.

“These dehumanizing symbols of pain and oppression continue to serve as backdrops to important government buildings, halls of justice, public parks and U.S. military properties,” she said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.