DeWitt: Time has come for Hernando to remove Confederate statue from courthouse lawn
There’s a big problem with Hernando County’s public display of the now almost universally condemned Confederate battle flag:
It’s etched in stone.
A large outline of the flag is on, or really part of, another relic of oppression — the statue of the Confederate soldier on the lawn of the historic Hernando County Courthouse.
I’m sure that by now you’ve read that support for displays of the battle flag is eroding as quickly as opposition to gay marriage. Dylann Roof allegedly killed innocent church-goers in Charleston, S.C., in hopes of creating an uprising among racists. Instead, thankfully, he created an uprising against racists. And their favorite emblems.
In South Carolina, where most politicians seem to agree on the need to remove the flag from the state Capitol grounds, this is an easy call and easily carried out. The flag, the actual piece of fabric, has been proudly flown by Roof and a long line of earlier white supremacists; of course, it needs to be removed. And doing so is as simple as lowering it from its pole.
It’s taken longer for people to turn their attention to Confederate monuments, because they aren’t as convenient to use as symbols or to uproot.
If you didn’t know it represented the cause of keeping human beings in chains, you might think of our white marble soldier — about 15 tall, including the base — as one of the most impressive edifices in downtown Brooksville.
But, unfortunately, it absolutely was erected to promote that cause.
About 3,000 people crowded into the then-tiny town of Brooksville for the unveiling on June 3, 1916, the birthday of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, according to a story published shortly afterward by the Confederate Veteran magazine.
“Automobiles decorated in Confederate colors and flying Confederate flags formed a line of parade at the railroad station and Confederate veterans and the women of the sixties led the way through the city,” the story says. Speakers praised the Southern cause and the “heros” who fought for it. Children sang the minstrel show standard — and Florida state song — Old Folks at Home.
And, like the flag, the symbolism of the statue has been adopted by racists, serving as a rallying point for massive Ku Klux Klan gatherings in the 1920s and smaller ones in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
And, of course, there is the flag itself, front and center on the statue’s granite base.
As it stands now, proudly floodlit and accentuated with a landscaped bed of liriope, the statue is a public endorsement of oppression. It’s an insult not just to black residents, but to anybody who cares about justice. It’s an embarrassment to the community, a fact that became especially clear when an anti-racist group from St. Petersburg drove to Brooksville on Saturday to demonstrate, an organizer told me, because that’s what our town is known for — our racist history and our racist monument.
What should be done? Give County Commissioner Diane Rowden credit for boldness. She wants it moved to the grounds of the Hernando Heritage Museum. So does local NAACP president Paul Douglas.
That’s one good option. Here’s another: Put the statue in its proper historical context. Erect a monument to the victims of racial violence and explain that for many decades Hernando was one of the nation’s most terrifying places for African-American residents.
Explain, further, that the same historical urge that led to this violence — the desire to maintain white supremacy of the Old South — led the United Daughters of the Confederacy to erect this statue.
Don’t like either of those options? Then Suzanne Touchton offered one that, really, nobody can argue with:
Start the necessary, inevitable discussion.
“What you need is black and white people talking about this, talking to each other, arguing with each other, yelling at each other,” said Touchton, a member of the Hernando chapter of the NAACP and the Hernando Historical Museum Association. “There’s a national debate going on. This is the perfect time.”
It’s happening in other parts of the country. Democrats and Republicans are questioning the presence of the many Confederate memorials on federal land in Washington. D.C. U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell — nobody’s idea of a progressive — has called for the removal of the statue of Davis from the Capitol of his home state of Kentucky.
Because the Brooksville statue is on county property, county commissioners are the obvious ones to start the conversation here.
But other than Rowden, none of them seemed to want to talk about it or answer emails about it. None of them, apparently, think our big problem is a problem at all.
Contact Dan DeWitt at [email protected]; follow @ddewitttimes.
Source : ampabay.com
