Friday, April 19, 2019

Where will the statue of Confederate general Kirby Smith end up?

Back on 2 July 2017, IPBiz had a post titled CBS Sunday Morning on 2 July 2017: notable for what was not said which included text:


The Almanac feature, going back to July 2, 1864 (one year after Day 2 of Gettysburg) was of interest for what was NOT mentioned. The 1864 date was that of the authorization of the National Statuary Hall in what had been the place of the House of Representatives. Each state was authorized to submit statues of two important people from the state. Exemplars on the CBS show included Garfield and Edison from Ohio. Another inventor mentioned was Robert Fulton. Not mentioned was Florida's included inventor John Gorrie, and Florida's other person, Confederate General Edmund Kirby-Smith (of the Trans-Mississippi Department). Relevant to certain public debate about statues of prominent Confederates, one notes that Mississippi presented Jefferson Davis and Virginia did Robert E. Lee. South Carolina did John Calhoun and General Wade Hampton. One wonders the fate of these Southerners/Confederates in the National Statuary Hall if protests are made?




On 19 April 2019 (nearly two years later), the Orlando Sentinel ran a story titled 'Evil coup?' Confederate statue sparks political fight for control of Lake County Historical Society , which included the text



A statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith that has represented Florida for nearly a century in the U.S. Capitol is at the heart of an unlikely partisan political fight — for control of the Lake County Historical Society.

The normally low-profile society, which runs a free historical museum in Tavares, won the right last year to display the statue when the general’s bronzed likeness is evicted from National Statuary Hall to make room for a figure of African-American educator and civil-rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune. That could be as soon as next year.

But if the general is coming, he won’t arrive without a battle.

“He has no place here, no connection whatsoever to Lake County,” said Mae Hazelton of Eustis, who is among more than two dozen people who have applied to be voting members of the society in hopes of reversing a decision to bring the statue to Tavares.

Hazelton said the museum’s pursuit of a confederate statue is insulting to her and other African-Americans in Lake County, where notoriously racist Sheriff Willis McCall was elected to office seven times from 1944 to 1972.




Within the Sentinel piece:

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