Bill would punish anyone removing Florida's Confederate memorials. How many have been removed?

Under instruction from Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan and after years of debates, crews finally removed two statues from the monument entitled "Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy" Wednesday morning in Springfield Park.

If a bill filed in November becomes law next year, not only would she have to put them back, but she could be fined and even removed from office for doing so.

HB 395, Protection of Historical Monuments and Memorials, filed by state Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, would not only prohibit the removal of "historical monuments and memorials," it allows and encourages anyone attempting it to be punished, hard.

• Someone removing a historical monument or memorial without permission would be liable for three times the cost of returning, repairing or replacing it.

• Any government official or elected officer who voted to remove it could be personally fined $5,000 or the cost of removal, repair, and replacement, whichever is greater, "without any reimbursement from any other entity."

• Any elected official who voted to remove it could be removed from office by the governor.

• If a monument or memorial has been removed, damaged or destroyed by the local government, it's on the hook to restore or replace it. If they don't have the money, the state will cover it and then withhold "all arts, cultural, and historic preservation funding" until the local government repays the costs.

• Anyone at all who claims to be "regularly using the monument or memorial for remembrance" would have standing to sue in state court over any unauthorized removal of a monument from public land.

• The bill is retroactive back to Jan. 1, 2017.

While the bill never specifically mentions the Confederacy, broadly stressing that "an accurate and factual history belongs to all Floridians and future generations," it's only been statues and memorials of Confederate Civil War generals and soldiers whose removal has been the subject of controversy.

The bill does make a point of detailing what specific, state-funded care is due the statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith (without naming him), originally one of two statues honoring Floridians in Statuary Hall in the U.S. Capitol. It was replaced in 2021 with civil rights activist and educator Mary McLeod Bethune.

Black, the chairman of the Republican Party of Duval County, sponsored a similar bill for the 2023 Florida Legislative Session but it never came up for a final vote.

The city of Jacksonville has removed several memorials in recent years, including a Confederate soldier statue in the heart of downtown across the street from the front entrance of Jacksonville City Hall in 2020 (the last part of it was quietly removed this year). Confederate Park in the Springfield neighborhood is now Springfield Park. In 2021, the Duval County School Board voted to rename six schools named after Confederate leaders.

However, the "Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy" hung on ever since then-mayor Lenny Curry proposed removing it in 2021. A University of North Florida poll in September found that 50% of respondents agreed with removing Confederate memorials.

What caused the movement to bring down Confederate memorials (and the backlash to it)? Which memorials have been removed, moved or renamed? And how many are left in Florida?

Why do people want to keep or restore Confederate statues and memorials?

Many people oppose removing Confederate memorials, arguing that:

• History should not be denied, no matter how complicated

• They are an essential part of the Southern heritage

• It starts a slippery slope to the removal of monuments of any currently problematic person

• Confederate memorials can be used as educational tools to fight racism.

"We should not destroy our history," Black said about the failed 2023 bill. "Neither should we prohibit anyone from telling their story. So don't tear down my history. Tell yours."

There also has been a substantial backlash to changes proposed during the Black Lives Matter movement by conservatives, with pushback to Black police chiefs attempting police reform and a drive in school boards and state education boards across the country to adopt a "patriotic education" which removes any controversial race-related teachings that conservatives have lumped together under "critical race theory." The Florida Board of Education approved a highly controversial new curriculum for African American history which critics said whitewashed history.

Why are they removing Confederate statues?

"We need to stop romanticizing the Confederate side of the Civil War and need to reveal the bitter truth," a student at Jacksonville's Lee High School said during a community meeting over changing the school's name (it's now called Riverside High). "The truth is that the civil war was fought over slavery. Period. And you won't find that in our history books."

Opponents of public Confederate memorials see them as both glorification of the people who declared war on the United States for the right to keep owning Black people and as an intentional ongoing intimidation of people of color.

"Symbols matter," Deegan said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. "They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity. That we are all created equal."

Most of the Confederate statues around the country went up between the 1890s and 1950s, long after the Civil War, during the era of Jim Crow segregation when white supremacists were creating a false narrative about the true motives of the Confederacy (the "Lost Cause"). Where previously Confederate monuments tended to be in cemeteries, these were placed prominently in public squares and in front of state buildings.

There was another surge of Confederacy tribute years later as an outraged backlash to the civil rights movement and the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Some schools and streets were renamed to honor Confederate leaders, Georgia added the Confederate battle flag to its state flag, and South Carolina added it to their capitol building in Columbia.

Southern schools' history textbooks: A long history of deception, and what the future holds

What does Gov. Ron DeSantis say about Confederate statues?

Gov. DeSantis has not commented on the bill, saying in November that he hadn't seen it yet.

In 2019, on the 144th anniversary of Mary McLeod Bethune's birth, DeSantis wrote a letter to U.S. Capitol officials formerly requesting them to replace the statue of Edmund Kirby Smith with Bethune.

"Dr. McLeod Bethune’s statue will represent the best of who we are as Floridians to visitors from around the world in our nation’s Capitol,” DeSantis said. “Her legacy endures and will continue to inspire future generations.”

However, in June he said he disagreed with the Department of Defense decision to rename North Carolina's Fort Bragg, named after Confederate General Braxton Bragg. The base is now Fort Liberty.

“I don’t think most people knew it was a Civil War general," DeSantis said, according to Florida Politics. "You just know you’ve been to Bragg, right? And they’re changing it for political correctness reasons. And so I don’t believe in doing it for political correctness reasons and that’s just kind of how we’re going to roll on it. And here’s the thing, you know, you learn from history, you don’t erase the history.”

Why have so many Confederate memorials been removed in the last decade?

The debate over Confederate memorials has gone on for years, but the current successful movement to remove them began after the June 17, 2015, mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, when a man shouting racial slurs killed nine Black people who were meeting there for Bible study, putting racism once again in the eyes of the national public. Two weeks later, 30-year-old Bree Newsome climbed the 30-foot pole in front of the Statehouse and removed the Confederate flag there. She was arrested and the flag replaced, but South Carolina state legislators soon voted to officially remove the flag.

That national conversation became a roar after a 2017 white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, protesting the removal of statues honoring Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson turned violent and deadly. Several high-profile killings of Black people — especially the murder of George Floyd in 2020 by a white police officer in Minneapolis who knelt on his neck for over nine minutes — rallied millions to the Black Lives Matter movement and attention on existing Confederate statues increased.

More than 90 Confederate monuments and 167 symbols were taken down across the country in 2020 after Floyd's death, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Congress passed a law over then-President Trump's veto to rename nine army posts and potentially hundreds of military bases named for Confederate heroes.

While the movement has slowed from that initial surge, it still continues. In December, after an extended legal battle, a 109-year-old Confederate monument was removed from Arlington National Cemetery in Virgina.

How many Confederate statues are in Florida?

According to the third edition of the Southern Poverty Law Center's report "Whose Heritage? Public Symbols of the Confederacy," as of February 2022 there were 75 Confederate memorials still present in Florida. That's one building, two parks, six counties or cities, 14 schools, four school districts, 16 roads, 19 monuments and 13 others (such as notable plaques and cemeteries).

Jacksonville was the Florida city with the most (9) Confederate symbols.

Since 2015, when the first "Whose Heritage?" report was published, at least 30 different Confederate memorials in Florida have been removed or renamed.

Whose Heritage? map: Search this interactive map of Confederate monuments in the U.S. and their status

How many Confederate statues have been taken down in Florida?

Along with the Confederate statues and memorials removed in Jacksonville, there have been others around the state.

The marker at the end of Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway in St. Petersburg was removed.

A bust of Robert E. Lee in Fort Myers was taken down and sent to a museum, although a group is fighting to bring it back.

A Florida appeals court ruled that a Confederate statue in Madison County can be removed, but its immediate future is unknown.

An Orlando-area attorney and Quincy native led the fight to bring down a Confederate monument in Gadsden County that had been in front of the county courthouse for 136 years.

St. Augustine decided to remove the city's Confederate memorial from the Plaza, where it had stood for more than 140 years, and a memorial was removed from a park west of the Plaza.

In 2017 Daytona Beach city officials stripped a riverfront war memorial of three plaques commemorating Confederate soldiers and moved them to a museum. After George Floyd, the sign in front of the ancient live oak in Port Orange called the "Confederate Oak" was quietly removed.

A Confederate monument in front of the Marion County Judicial Center in Ocala was moved to a veterans park in 2010.

In 2020, Pensacola officials took down the monument of an 8-foot statue of a Confederate soldier, along with the 50-foot granite pedestal, that sat in Florida Square for 129 years. Supporters filed a lawsuit to bring it back but a circuit court judge denied the motion in August and the monument currently remains in storage at the Port of Pensacola.

A Confederate statue called "Johnny Reb" was moved from an Orlando park near Lake Eola in 2017 to a historic cemetery where 37 Confederate soldiers are buried. A time capsule was discovered underneath containing newspapers, a Confederate flag and Confederate States of America dollar bills, among other items.

In Lakeland, a 109-year-old statue of a Confederate soldier was removed from the center of Munn Park in 2019 and moved to Veterans Park. A group advocating for preserving Confederate monuments sued the city. Nearby and two years later, a Confederate marker outside the old courthouse in downtown Bartow was moved to Oak Hill Cemetery.

A Confederate monument was removed from downtown Bradenton in 2017 after a great deal of controversy during the process.

How many Confederate school names in Florida have been changed?

Until 2020, Roberto Clemente Middle School near Orlando was named for Stonewall Jackson, while Robert E. Lee Middle School was renamed College Park Middle.

The Alachua County School Board voted unanimously to rename J.J. Finley Elementary School, named for a Confederate general, to honor a prominent Black physicist in World War II, Carolyn Beatrice Parker. The Kirby-Smith Center was quietly renamed in 2017 to be simply the Alachua County Public Schools District Office.

Lee Elementary in Tampa is now Tampa Heights Elementary. Robert E. Lee Middle in Miami was changed to Jose De Diego Middle.

The Jacksonville area saw a wave of name changes in 2021 that moved sharply away from Confederate leaders: Springfield Academy was once known as Kirby-Smith Middle School, Westside Middle was previously J.E.B. Stuart Middle School, Charger Academy used to be Jefferson Davis Middle, Nathan B. Forrest High became Westside High, and Riverside High was once named for Robert E. Lee. The former Joseph Finegan Elementary School in Atlantic Beach became simply Anchor Academy, and Stonewall Jackson Elementary is now Hidden Oaks.

Eighty-two public schools across the United States have chosen to drop their namesakes since 2020, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal data.

Naming rights, naming wrongs: A school was named after a violent white supremacist. For years no one knew who he was.

How many Florida parks honoring Confederate leaders have been renamed?

In 2020, the city of Jacksonville renamed Hemming Park, named after Charles C. Hemming, who fought for the Confederacy in the Civil War and donated a statue of a Confederate soldier to the city. It's now James Weldon Johnson Park, after poet, diplomat, attorney and civil rights leader James Weldon Johnson. Johnson, with his brother, also composed "Lift Every Voice and Sing," which became known as the Black national anthem.

In Pensacola, Lee Square became Florida Square.

What other Confederate memorials in Florida have been removed?

Four streets in the Hollywood/Pembroke Pines area — Lee Street, Forrest Street, Forrest Drive and Hood Street — were all renamed in 2017.

In 2022, the Pensacola Police Department unveiled a new design that removed the Confederate flag from police badges and patches.

In 2016 the Florida Senate chamber was renovated and a 10-foot-by-16-foot mural depicting a Confederate general and flag was removed and moved to a nearby bank. The year before, the Florida Senate agreed to strip the Confederate battle flag from its official seal.

The Confederate flag flew at the Florida state Capitol from 1978 to 2001, when then-Gov. Jeb Bush had it removed.

“My position on how to address the Confederate flag issue is clear: In Florida, we acted, moving the flag from the state grounds to a museum where it belonged,” Bush said in a statement at the time.

What state has the most Confederate statues? Where are the majority of Confederate statues located?

Virginia has the most Confederate symbols (including statues, memorials, road names, school names, official seals, etc) as of the beginning of 2022, according to an analysis of the “Whose Heritage?” data project by the Southern Poverty Law Center:

1. Virginia: 290 Confederate symbols (107 removed since 1880)

2. Georgia: 285 Confederate symbols (26 removed since 1880)

3. Texas: 242 Confederate symbols (65 removed since 1880)

4. South Carolina: 224 Confederate symbols (4 removed since 1880)

5. North Carolina: 176 Confederate symbols (31 removed since 1880)

Florida came in at No. 10, with 77 Confederate symbols as of Jan. 21, 2022. Up to that point, 33 Confederate symbols had been removed since 1880.

How many Confederate statues are left in the U.S.?

In 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted 723 Confederate monuments in the country.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Confederate statues to be protected in Florida under strict new bill