Lakeland discusses Confederate statue in park (FL)

[struggle4progress]

Marcus A Grayson
6:07 p.m. EDT September 25, 2015

... When Bob Harris goes downtown he avoids Munn Park. This African-American is offended by the park's centerpiece -- a statue of a Confederate solider. He says, "It's time to put Johnny Reb where Johnny Reb belongs. They are not coming back. The South will not rise again" ...

At a recent Lakeland City Commissioners meeting resident Julie Townsend told leaders "Lakeland was not a city when the civil war was fought. Certainly Munn Park there was no battle fought there" ...

Another resident Jo Ann Homes said, "If we remove the statue it will be a gesture not just for our community, but to other communities" ...

David Dickey, a street photographer, says the statue in the park doesn't really look like this. He shows me a picture of an elephant where the statue sits. He says this issue is like have an elephant in the room, or park. He says many leaders are ignoring the problem many people have with the statue ...

http://www.wtsp.com/story/news/local/2015/09/25/confederate-statue-must-go/72820984/

[csziggy]

1. While they're at it, rename the Polk County seat

Lakeland is in Polk County and the county seat is Barrow, named for the first Confederate officer to die during the Civil War. It needs to be named for someone who actually did something useful in life!

How about name it Summerlin, for Jacob Summerlin who donated the land a d money for the town's school? Or Brownsville for L. B. Brown a former slave who became a successful man and whose house in Barrow is on the Historic Register?

I grew up in Bartow, graduated from Summerlin Institute, and would love to see the name changed to honor Mr. Brown.

[struggle4progress]

2. That town seems to have been unable to decide permanently on its name!

Fort Blount, Peace Creek, Peas Creek, Reidsville ...

And the confederate Bartow seems to have nothing to do with its history

[csziggy]

3. True - that's why I think a total change would be good

I went to school with a descdant of the Blount the fort was named for - she was glad the name hadn't stuck. Jacob Summerlin was generous but not a great man. Pease Creek or the variant Peace River would be the best of the old names. So far as I know no one knows who the Reid was to have it named for him.

My father re-edited the Polk County Gazetteer a while back and he never traced the origin of Reidsville.

L. B. Brown is much more historically significant and having his home named as a historic place has done a lot to raise awareness of African-American contributions to Polk County history. I think he did more for the town than most of the white people ever did. Of course my family only arrived in the area in 1925 and didn't actually live in Barrow until 1952.

[madfloridian]

4. Bartow not Barrow.

[csziggy]

6. Typo - I'm on my tablet and typing (or correcting) is a PITA nt

[madfloridian]

7. Thanks.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

8. Heck, rename the county.

Polk started the Mexican-American war, many dead in that little kerfuffle. Let's purge Prez Polk from our collective memories.

[YabaDabaNoDinoNo]

15. It is pronounced Poke the L is silent

[csziggy]

16. Only for the families that have lived there a long time

Our family from out of state with a lot of Michigan people pronounced it to rhyme with "folk."

[madfloridian]

5. There is no flag on that statue. It is a memorial statue.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

9. But it offends someone. It has to go.

Perhaps the Jefferson Memorial should be demolished, him being a slave-owner.

If purging history is the path toward true equality and the end of prejudice, then I would be fine with removing this statue. But I don't think purging history will get the job done.

[madfloridian]

10. Commissioner Walker is right.

He's an intelligent forward thinking man. He calmly said taking it down would not change hearts.

And I think Hillary Clinton was partly right about what she said about not being able to change hearts.

I once knew the area well. Two of the people leading the fight to take down the statue are white and Democrats. They are admittedly doing so for politically expedient reasons.

In an area that is so extremely conservative, some hearts won't change if every symbol of everything about the South is forcefully taken down or moved or destroyed.

Few people especially care about that statue per se until you say take it down. That would change things.

It was a statue put up in memory of the Civil War dead. It has no flag on it, and only speaks in memoriam.

[struggle4progress]

14. As far as I can tell, monuments like this aren't being destroyed: they're being moved

to museums, cemeteries, or battlefields

Nobody seems eager to destroy historic sites or historical records

The offensiveness of the monuments in many cases springs from the fact that they are closely associated with the Jim Crow movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: they're really intended as dog-whistles for white supremacy

[struggle4progress]

11. Lakeland didn't exist until after the civil war, so it's not a monument

to the confederate dead of Lakeland

The monument itself dates from 1910, during a period when Jim Crow was being consolidated across the US

Various lynchings of blacks in Polk county are known from that era -- Fred Rochelle burned alive 1900 and Jack Wade killed 1909 -- as well as Jacob Nader killed 1909 and Henry Scott killed 1920 (both in Lakeland itself)

Local history of racism might be gauged by the fact that Lakeland's Abraham Lincoln Klan #5 erected the first Florida Klan lodge:

... in September 1938 ... Life magazine published two photographs of a Ku Klux Klan rally in Lakeland. "This Negro group, lined up outside a Lakeland beer parlor, is being warned by Klansmen against disturbances, threatened with hooded mass violence," stated the .. caption above Lakelander Dan Sanborn's photograph ...

Such an image is on the town website, with the more innocuous caption, Black citizens of Lakeland confront the Ku Klux Klan on Florida Avenue, August 1938

This link contains a picture of a Lakeland Klan rally from a 1953 issue of Jet

In the civil rights era, the Florida Klan definitely waved the confederate flag, as you can see from 1963 photos at the link provided

And in fact the Munn Park monument does have a confederate flag engraved on it

[madfloridian]

12. You are right. People drive around with confederate flags. Very right wing area.

Do you really think taking that statue down will change people like that?

Do you think there is honor in 2 Democrats (maybe more now not up to date this week) leading the way to take it down, and making it political?

And the African American commissioner saying even if you take it down it won't change stuff?

I don't care one way or the other. But a war on one symbol in the south leads to another to be taken down or destroyed. What will that really accomplish?

[struggle4progress]

13. IMO it's a local decision. There's a confederate memorial in front of the old county courthouse

in my town; it was spray-painted in July, but other than that I'm unaware of any real interest in it

The county commission here is majority dark-skinned; the city council is almost half dark-skinned, counting our dark-skinned mayor; and we're on our third courthouse now, the newest being several blocks away from the memorial

Like you, I don't care about these memorials themselves so much, but I'm a pasty-skinned fellow, and confederate symbols have never suggested to me that I was in immediate danger. OTOH, in my younger days, I regularly saw TV and magazine images of folk with hate-twisted faces, angry about integration, waving that rag and shouting their defiance; it was regularly used to symbolize so-called "white-power," and if I had a darker complexion, I might be a bit uncomfortable about any celebration of things confederate -- especially since the great confederate nostalgia of the early 20th century coincided with the triumph of Jim Crow

So far as I can tell, these memorials aren't being destroyed anywhere: they're being removed to less conspicuous locations, like museums, cemeteries, or battlefields. If people here want to remove our local confederate memorial to (say) a local cemetery, I'll support them. Other options exist too