The Jacksonville Confederate Monuments Must Come Down

Emily Timbol
Aug 22, 2017 · 4 min read

If you ask people not from Jacksonville to name the most symbolic thing about the city, you’re taking your chances on what their answer will be. Football fans might say the Jaguars, with varying added comments. People who have driven through or visited might mention the smell (either Maxwell House, or maybe something less pleasant.) But unlike how Seattle and St. Louis have famous landmarks, and Orlando and Cedar Point have major attractions, Jacksonville doesn’t have one thing that sets it apart from every other city. As someone who’s lived here most of my life, that’s one reason it’s bothered me so much when people say that taking down Jacksonville’s numerous monuments named for confederate “heroes” will do more harm than good.

They’re not doing any good now. So is fighting to keep them up, being the one city who holds on to confederate monuments the thing Jacksonville citizens want to be known for?

Before you answer that, you should know just how many proud monuments to white supremacy and/or the confederacy currently exist in Jacksonville. This list, compiled by Occupy Jacksonville’s #TakeEmDownJax surprised even me, someone who has lived here for decades and been active in Progressive politics for years.

Hemming Park — the city’s first park, originally named City Park. It was renamed again (from St. James Park) after Charles C. Hemming, a slave owning confederate Infantry man donated a confederate monument sometime after escaping from prison in 1864.

The Hart Bridge — named after Isaiah David Hart, the founder of Jacksonville who made his wealth, according to Canter Brown Jr’s biography of Hart’s son Ossiah, by stealing slaves and reselling them in Georgia.

The Fuller Warren Bridge — named after late Jacksonville governor Fuller Warren. Warren was outed as a former Klansman and admitted his former membership publicly, and then despite trying to distance himself from his past and claim to fight racism, later ran for governor of Florida promising to maintain segregation.

John C. Matthews Bridge — named for a Florida senator who created the “White Primary Bill” which would bar blacks from voting in primary elections.

Kirby-Smith Middle School — Named after the confederate General born in St. Augustine who after the war had little connection to Florida. He was wounded in the first battle of Bull Run and placed by Jefferson Davis in charge of the Trans-Missippi Department. None of that matters more than the fact that he was a traitor to America who fought for the cause of the rights of the states to determine if they should be able to own people as slaves.

Andrew Jackson High — Yes, our city is also named after the seventh President. That does not erase genocide.

Jefferson Davis Middle The “President” of the confederacy.

J.E.B. Stuart Middle — A slave owner who resigned his post in the U.S. Army, and moved his family back to the South to offer his allegiance to the Confederacy.

I’ve driven over the Fuller Warren bridge every day for the past eight years. It horrified me when I found out who the bridge was named for. But Emily, who cares? If you didn’t know before, why does it matter if you know now? It wasn’t hurting people yesterday. This is all a big distraction.

That argument is really rich to me as a Jacksonville native, who DOES drive over bridges every day, and gets to see the giant, $63 million dollar scoreboards in Everbank Field. I remember when that stadium was called Alltell stadium. Before that it was the Jacksonville Municipal Stadium. To a lot of residents of Jax, those scoreboards are the symbols of what our city represents. They’re hope of something better. So what if we have to invest money to make some changes, if the change is worth it? Where Jacksonville spends its money, is where it values lie.

Symbols matter. Names matter. I’ve worked in IT for over a decade and gone through more than one company re-branding where most of my co-workers barely batted an eye. But now we’re asking people to think about changing the name of a predominantly black middle school named after a slave-owning general of the Confederacy, and suddenly it’s asking the impossible.

America, Jacksonville is past needing proof that systemic and institutional racism exists. We know it does, so the only question that remains is how do we as a city respond?

We Take ‘Em Down.

And after we do, we have a real opportunity to establish new symbols, to lead the way for cities in the South towards edifying diversity and inclusion, instead of white supremacy. THAT is how we become known as the “Bold New City of The South.”

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