Lake County would do well to include in its contextualization the fact that Edmund Kirby Smith ordered the killing of African-American soldiers who had surrendered.
Lake County must learn history -- this article from the Orlando Sentinel oddly omits the fact of Edmund Kirby Smith's murders, and incorrectly states (twice) that the Civil War ended in 1863.
The Orlando Sentinel has suspended all comments pending review of its comment policy. Someone should tell OS that it needs a copy editor.
Here's the story:
As Confederate statue plan stirs turmoil, Lake official seeks compromise to ease opposition
For a guy who’s been dead 125 years, Edmund Kirby Smith has sure stirred up a lot of trouble in Lake County, a place he never stepped foot in but where his likeness might stand in perpetuity.
Over vehement objections, the curator for the Lake County Historical Museum is forging ahead with plans to bring a 9-foot-tall statue of the obscure Confederate general to Tavares in 2020 when Smith’s bronze figure is booted from its prestigious perch in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol to make room for a sculpture of African-American educator Mary McLeod Bethune.
To some whites here, the St. Augustine-born Smith is a heroic figure worthy of honor — a West Point-educated military commander who stayed true to his home state’s values, fighting fiercely in the Civil War, though on the losing side. But to others, especially blacks, Smith was a slave-owning traitor who reneged on his U.S. military oath and fought to preserve Southern life and slavery.
Seeking compromise, Lake County Commissioner Leslie Campione proposed an alternative approach this week to resolving the conflict that would let the statue come to Lake County but require each side to “give a little in the name of respect, education, empathy and forgiveness.”
She suggested creating an advisory group to oversee details of the statue’s display and create a surrounding exhibit to offer context while highlighting achievements of black residents who overcame adversity and racial obstacles.
“Perhaps, by some miracle, we may turn a negative into a positive,” Campione said.
In June, when a five-member Statue Location Selection Committee chose a bid by Lake County museum curator Bob Grenier as the best relocation option for the century-old statue, outraged blacks mobilized. They were angry Grenier hadn’t sought their input before pursuing a military leader who advised his subordinates during the war to follow a policy “giving no quarter” to black Union soldiers and to kill captured blacks rather than take them prisoner as they did other Yankees.
“Who could honestly say they couldn’t see any problem with this statue,” said Michael Watkins, a black pastor who organized an appeal to Lake County commissioners.
He and other activists, both black and white, also persuaded elected officials in Clermont, Leesburg and Tavares to adopt resolutions opposing the relocation of the statue to Lake County. All approved unanimously except Tavares, where Grenier, also a city councilman, cast the lone no vote. Identical measures will be presented Monday to the Groveland City Council and Sept. 20 to the Eustis City Commission.
The formal resolutions — petitions to be forwarded to the state committee that awarded the statue to Lake County — mention neither race nor the Confederacy but instead point out that Smith has “no connection” to Lake County.
While the museum operates independently, its landlord in the historic county courthouse is the County Commission, which could shut the doors.
The issue has opened old wounds for African-Americans in this county northwest of Orlando where no black candidate has ever won a countywide election and where the late Willis McCall, a notoriously intolerant sheriff, forged a legacy of brutality and racial injustice during a 28-year run as the county’s top elected lawman. Much of that sordid truth is documented in historian Gilbert King’s book “Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America,” which won the Pulitzer Prize.
Campione’s proposal aims to bring the clashing sides together.
Grenier, his voice trembling at times, embraced Campione’s concept.
“Bring the statue here,” he said. “Let’s do this as a community. Let’s show the world: Here in Lake County, black, white, red, yellow, we can all get together and tell a beautiful, wonderful story.”
He also read a letter written by Maria Kirby Smith, the dead general’s great-granddaughter and a sculptor. A resident of South Carolina, she attended the commission meeting but was too shy and emotional to read her words herself, Grenier said.
She denied her great-grandfather was ever a Klansman as has been alleged. She said he had wanted to be an Episcopalian preacher or mathematics teacher.
“I am not ashamed,” she wrote. “I will not deny my great grandfather nor will I vilify him for his time and place.”
Nicknamed “Seminole” by fellow cadets, Smith was the first native Floridian appointed to the U.S. Military Academy and the last Confederate general to lay down his sword. Confederate Army Commander Robert E. Lee surrendered in April 1863, Smith didn’t give up until two months later.
Those opposed to bringing the statue to Lake view Smith as a symbol of segregation and oppression who left Florida at age 12 rarely to return and then only to visit. He also brought a household slave to war to serve as his personal valet.
Watkins said he would be agreeable to Campione’s plan if the state relocation committee doesn’t reconsider and the statue is forced upon the community.
“Blacks always seem to be the ones who have to forgive, to give in,” he said.
Florida’s decision to take Smith out of National Statuary Hall, where each state is allowed two figures, gained momentum in 2015 after a racially motivated mass shooting at a church in Charleston, S.C., that left nine black men and women dead.
A state committee chose to replace Smith with Bethune, a daughter of slaves, from a pool of nominees that included conservationist and author Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Publix founder George Washington Jenkins and Walt Disney.
The Statuary Hall Collection, created by an act of Congress in 1864 — the year after the Civil War ended — was intended to allow each state to commemorate "deceased persons who have been citizens thereof, and illustrious for their historic renown or for distinguished civic or military services." Smith, who also was a veteran of the Mexican-American War, mathematics professor, published botanist and a co-founder of the University of the South in Tennessee, was among a dozen figures from the Confederacy enshrined there.
Since 2000, when Congress passed a law allowing states to update their statuary representation, 12 new figures have been installed, including Helen Keller, who replaced Confederate officer Jabez Curry as one of Alabama’s statues.
Florida’s other statue honors John Gorrie, considered the father of air conditioning and refrigeration.
The Legislature chose Smith to represent Florida in 1907, a year coinciding with the emergence of the “Lost Cause” movement, which romanticized the Confederacy's origins and existence, said Thomas Graham, a retired history professor.
Graham, a member of a committee that drafted controversial “contextual” language for plaques that will be added to public Confederate memorials in St. Augustine, also had submitted a bid to bring the Smith statue home to St. Augustine.
The city claims both Smith and his statue’s sculptor, C. Adrian Pilars.
“This seemed like the appropriate place for it,” Graham said. “But we were in the midst of our own Confederate monument controversy...Realizing the atmosphere at the time, introducing another Confederate monument into the mix was simply not prudent.”
shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6361.
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