Workers hauled off a monument to women of the Confederacy from a Jacksonville, Florida, park Wednesday, in what the city’s mayor called a show of “belief in our shared humanity,” but a political opponent described it as “tearing down history.”
The “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument was removed from Springfield Park, where it had stood since 1915, on orders from Mayor Donna Deegan.
“Symbols matter. 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,”
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The monument will be held in city storage for now.
Pushes to remove the monument date back to at least 2020, when Deegan’s predecessor, Mayor Lenny Curry, ordered the removal of another long-standing Confederate monument from a city park amid national calls for social justice spurred by the Minneapolis death of George Floyd in police custody.
A proposal to remove the Confederate women tribute was introduced to the Jacksonville City Council in 2021, but the Republican-controlled board never moved on it.
Earlier this month, Jacksonville’s Office of General Counsel determined that Deegan, as the city’s top executive, had sufficient authority to remove the statue without City Council approval because the project wasn’t being undertaken with city funds.
According to city officials, the $187,000 bill for the removal is being covered by a grant that the Jessie Ball duPont Fund and anonymous donors made to 904WARD, a nonprofit that describes itself as dedicated to bringing about an “end to racism in Jacksonville so all people thrive.”
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“This action, undertaken in the middle of the night, during the holidays, without consultation of city leaders or a vote by the council, is another in a long line of woke Democrats [sic] obsession with Cancel Culture and tearing down history,” Black wrote on Facebook.
Deegan disputed that characterization in an interview with local outlet WJXT.
“Look, we didn’t do it under a cloud of secrecy. The equipment was moved in the day before,” Deegan said in part. “Although that’s a tidy narrative, that work was done, all of the work, all of the statutes came down in broad daylight.”
* Original Article:
https://themessenger.com/news/jacksonville-florida-confederate-women-statue-monument-springfield-park-civil-war
