Confederate statue backers win battle in Lake County. Foes dismayed by 3-2 vote. (Orlando Sentinel)

Edmund Kirby Smith, originally from St. Augustine,  left town and never came back. The Confederate Civil War General ordered that African-American prisoners of war be murdered.   his statue  has found a home in Tavares in the Lake Courthouse, by 3-2 vote.
The late KKK racist murderous Lake County Sheriff Willis McCall, would approve.

Confederate statue backers win battle in Lake County. Foes dismayed by 3-2 vote.
Stephen Hudak
By STEPHEN HUDAK
ORLANDO SENTINEL |
JUL 30, 2019 | 8:04 PM

Alphonso Walker (left), an economic development consultant from Eustis, explains his view of the Edmund Kirby Smith statue to Ray Powers, a director at Lake County’s tax-supported historical museum following a 3-2 vote by Lake commissioners to approve transfer of the confederate figure to the museum. Walker had appealed to commissioners to block the museum from displaying the statue. (Hailey Gavin / Orlando Sentinel)


TAVARES — The statue of a Confederate general almost nobody else wanted has won a hard-fought home in Lake County’s tax-supported historical museum.
But the battle over the bronze likeness of Edmund Kirby Smith left wounds that won’t soon heal, especially in the county’s black communities, opponents said after Tuesday’s three-hour hearing with Lake commissioners.
Commissioners had authority as museum landlord to say no. Instead, they voted 3-2 to endorse a statement drafted by museum curator Bob Grenier, who intends to house the 7-foot-tall statue in the museum’s war gallery.
Alphonso Walker, an economic development consultant and Lake resident, told commissioners their decision would brand Lake County as a place of insensitivity, and that kind of reputation could stunt the growth the county has been enjoying.
More than three dozen county residents appealed to commissioners to block the museum in the county historic courthouse from displaying the Jim Crow-era relic once the figure is evicted from its spot in the National Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol.
Of the 40 people who asked to speak, only four urged commissioners to allow the statue to come here.
Many said bringing the statue would be hurtful and open old wounds.
Commission Chairwoman Leslie Campione sought a definitive vote on the statue, which has sparked dissension for more than a year. The vote came in advance of an Aug. 10 civil rights march in Tavares organized to protest the statue.
Campione was joined by commissioners Josh Blake and Tim Sullivan in backing the statue’s relocation. Commissioners Wendy Breeden and Sean Parks opposed it.
Museum curator Bob Grenier, the driving force behind the plan, didn’t show up for the hearing. But Campione relayed his plans for the figure, which is leaving the prestigious hall in Washington, D.C., to make way for a marble statue of African-American educator and voting-rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune.
Statue foe Mae Hazelton of Eustis also used Grenier’s words in an effort to sway a board majority.
While Campione offered an empathetic message to statue foes and argued the museum’s plan to show the statue wouldn’t glorify Smith, slavery or the lost cause of the Confederacy, Hazelton read aloud Grenier’s emails, which she said she obtained in a public-records request. The missives painted a far less conciliatory message.
“He called those in opposition unruly, nasty and vicious people,” Hazelton said. “He said though he wished the General would stay in Statuary Hall in D.C., ‘it will be replaced, so we might as well get it to the museum where we all can enjoy it...’ He said ‘I believe I’ve fought the good fight for my Confederate friends. I stayed true to your cause.”
Evelyn Turner, a black woman opposed to bringing the statue to Tavares, told commissioners the general has almost no connection to Lake County.
“Bringing the statue will do nothing but rekindle the ‘old stuff’ and you know what I mean by the ‘old stuff,'" she said.
But Blake argued it was historical and the commission shouldn’t censor the museum.
He wondered if blocking the planned relocation of the statue would lead to other censoring, citing Eustis’ annual celebration of George Washington’s birthday as a possible target.
“Is GeorgeFest a racist celebration?” Blake asked, noting that the first president owned slaves. “Is that the next step?”
One of the few in the audience to speak in favor of the statue, Herb Seegers, said Smith had qualities that led the Legislature to memorialize him a century ago.
“I don’t know the man but, to me, this does not sound like an evil devil that he has been portrayed as so far,” Seegers said.
More than a year ago, a five-member state Statue Location Selection Committee chose a bid by Grenier as the best relocation option for the century-old statue, incensing black residents and other opponents who mobilized an effort to reverse the decision.
Most were angry Grenier hadn’t sought their input before pursuing the effigy of a long-dead military leader who advised his subordinates during the Civil War to follow a policy “giving no quarter” to black Union soldiers.
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His orders directed them to kill black prisoners of war rather than hold them as they did other Yankees.
Many foes said the statue is a black eye for a county with a well-known history of racial intolerance, which includes the seven-term reign of notoriously racist Sheriff Willis McCall, who died in 1994. His office was on the first floor of the county’s historic courthouse, which coincidentally is the museum’s home and soon will be the statue’s.
A fierce segregationist, McCall gained national notoriety in the Groveland Four case, shooting two of the defendants — killing one — in 1951 while transporting them from a north Florida prison to Lake County for a retrial.
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.
Florida’s other statue honors John Gorrie, considered the father of air conditioning and refrigeration.

shudak@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6361

Stephen Hudak often writes about bears in Central Florida and weird things in the Orlando area, including Orange County government. He likes snow and Ohio State but wound up in the Sunshine State, which has been good to him. He was a Pulitzer finalist for work on the FAMU hazing tragedy.