Sometimes Florida Man gets it right.
A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to see the new
sculpture that will be Florida’s gift to the National Statuary Hall early next
year. The Daytona Beach News-Journal Center is currently providing an
opportunity for Floridians to see this favorite daughter sculpture that will be
Florida’s second statue in the hall. It is well worth the time and effort to
visit. But more importantly, it is worth knowing the story behind it.
The Father of the Air Conditioner and a Traitor
Since 1864 our nation’s Capitol has provided each state a space for two sculptures which would represent the people and history of that state. The statues stand in the National Statuary Hall in the heart of the capital building.
Florida’s first contribution was a statue of John Gorrie.
He was a scientist who spent his life seeking means to deal with the deadly
diseases such as malaria which were rife in warmer climates in the early 19th
CE.
Gorrie came to Apalachicola in Florida’s panhandle to conduct his research. Eventually he was able to create a mechanical means of creating ice used to keep patient rooms cool. His machine gave rise to what would become refrigerators and eventually served as the birth of the air conditioner. Many see the advent of air conditioning as the threshold of modern Florida which after widespread air conditioning of homes became available in the 1950s grew from a small Southern backwater to the nation’s third largest state.
Little wonder Florida would want to remember this famous
citizen. Florida’s first contribution to the National Statuary Hall was a
marble sculpture of John Gorrie installed in 1914.
The second contribution to the Hall came in 1922 when
Florida installed a bronze sculpture of Confederate General Kirby Smith. While
Smith had been born in St. Augustine, he had spent most of his life outside of
the state making him a nominal Floridian at best. Ironically, a statue of Smith
would have been ineligible to be placed in the Statuary Hall when it first
opened since he was busy leading a war against the country at the time.
Whatever else Kirby Smith might have been, he was a traitor to the United
States.
Smith’s placement in the Hall reflected the Jim Crow
culture of the early 20th CE with its “Lost Cause” myth which prompted the
placement of Confederate sculptures in cities and towns across the South in the
1920s. While ostensibly seeking to remember the righteous cause of a South
defeated by “Northern aggression” (as some mythologizers still refer to the
Civil War), in fact the subtext of these placements was decidedly political and
economic.
Confederate soldier statue, Eola Park, Orlando
Jim Crow culture was determined to reverse any gains formerly enslaved people had made during the all-too-brief Reconstruction era following
their emancipation at the end of the Civil War. Part of that agenda was accomplished
by sculptures such as Smith’s that reminded everyone in not so subtle terms “We
are in control. Don’t get out of line.” And where subtle reminders failed, a
wave of lynchings and the destruction of African-American communities from
Ocoee and Rosewood in Florida to the Black Wall Street of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
would make that point in deadly terms.
Long a source of contention among many Floridians, efforts
to remove Smith’s sculpture from the
Hall took shape in 2015 when the first bills to replace that sculpture were
filed. The following year in response to the shooting deaths of nine
African-American parishioners by a white supremacist in a Charleston, SC
church, the state legislature voted to remove Smith and then-governor Ric Scott
signed the bill.
It would take another five years to remove the sculpture
which only left the Hall this past September. Where it will go is unclear.
Initial efforts to place the sculpture in a Lake County history museum in
Tavares failed when the county commission there, under pressure from local
community activists, rejected the move there.
Orlando
Confederate statute removed, placed in cemetery with CSA dead, 2017
In 2018, the state legislature voted to replace Smith’s
sculpture with that of Mary McLeod Bethune. The vote was unanimous in the
Senate after Ocala legislator Dennis Baxley, a descendant of Confederate
soldiers, was successful in adding an amendment that would allow the Smith
sculpture which was then still in the Statuary Hall to be placed somewhere in
Florida. In the House, the vote was nearly unanimous with the one nay vote cast
by Jacksonville Representative Jay Fant opposing the bill saying
“Messing with statues is a fool's errand for the
Legislature…I don't think we should even remove any of the statues that we
have, including the one's that they're moving to replace here. … It's one of
those issues that I think truly creates division within communities, this whole
statue-removal business, and I don't want to be part of all that.”
The irony of an argument cast in terms of preventing
“division” marshalled in support of retaining a statue of a Confederate general
in the capitol of the country he sought to destroy in order to preserve slavery
cannot be lost on anyone capable of even a modicum of critical thinking.
Fortunately, this Florida Man did not prevail.
The Godmother of the Civil Rights Movement
The display the News-Journal Center has created is superb
in providing an opportunity to see the beautiful sculpture of Bethune before it
is shipped off to Washington. Once in place in the Hall it may not be possible
to get the full round view of the sculpture available in its current display.
But more importantly, the display provides a very thorough
discussion of the life of Mary McLeod Bethune. As a young black woman who had
struggled out of an impoverished household to first educate herself and then to
educate others, Bethune came to Daytona Beach determined to make a difference
for African-Americans. Among her many accomplishments she would found the
National Council of Negro Women, advise five U.S. presidents and create a boarding
school for Black children that would later become Bethune-Cookman University in
Daytona Beach.
In many ways, Bethune would prove to be the Godmother of
the Civil Rights Movement. Her groundwork in advising Franklin Roosevelt’s
administration on racial issues would create a fertile place for the justice
movements that would arise beginning in the 1950s.
A poignant illustration of that behind-the-scenes role
would come in 1946 when Jackie Robinson would break the color barrier in
professional baseball. Refused a place to stay or a park in which to play during
spring training in nearby Florida cities, Bethune invited Robinson to stay with
her and encouraged the city to invite his Kansas City Monarchs team, an AAA
International League farm team of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to play the Dodgers in
a spring training game at Daytona.
On March 17, 1946 Robinson would break the color barrier in
professional baseball in City Park in Daytona Beach. That park, just down the
waterfront from the News-Journal Center in Daytona, is now named Jackie
Robinson Park.
Kirby Smith had only tangential ties at best to Florida.
Bethune, a native South Carolinian who came to Florida at age 24 and spent the
remainder of her life seeking to make it a better place, is a true native
daughter. It is a great honor to have her represent the people of Florida in
the National Statuary Hall.
A Number of Firsts
Nilda Comas, a Puerto Rican sculpture with a long history
of works in marble, is the first Hispanic artist to have work displayed in the
Statuary Hall. Her portrayal of Bethune will become the first African-American
sculpture from any state and the first African-American woman to take her place
in the Hall. She will also be the first sculpture bearing academic regalia
among the 100 state sculptures.
The marble used to create the sculpture came from the same quarry as Michelangelo used to created his immortal depiction of David. Comas was fortunate to get the last block of white marble to be taken from this pit which is now closed. The black rose, which Bethune loved, would come from a separate quarry in Spain. The marble from which it would be sculpted is incredibly fragile and required a great deal of care in its creation.
Comas would depict Bethune in academic regalia, perched on
a pile of books representing her long role in educating Florida’s youth,
holding the black rose. The rose reflects Bethune’s experience of a black
velvet rose she encountered at a conference in Switzerland. Taken by the
unexpected beauty of the rose, Bethune would say
I never saw a garden so beautiful, roses of all colors. And in the midst of the garden I saw a giant Black Velvet Rose. I never saw a Black Velvet Rose before and I said to myself ‘Oh, this is the great interracial garden! This is the garden where we have people of all colors, all classes, all creeds…
The pile of books on which Bethune’s figure is perched
provides the third of the three points needed to insure a standing sculpture’s
stability. On each of the books is written a word from Bethune’s final essay,
“I Leave You,” completed just before her death. The titles are telling: Hope,
Faith, Honor.
This sculpture is clearly a labor of love. Chosen from
among 1600 applicants for the commission, Comas would travel to Bethune’s
childhood home in South Carolina and assemble hundreds of photographs to get a sense
of who Bethune was. She then traveled to Italy and Spain to locate the marble
for her creation.
Three years of hard work went into this depiction which
will be the first of two sculptures of Bethune Comas will produce. The second,
a bronze replica of the marble version headed for Washington will soon grace
the Riverfront Esplanade Park on the Halifax River in downtown Daytona Beach,
just yards away from Jackie Robinson Park and Museum.
My
Sister brought her students from Pace Center Ocala and arranged to have the sculptor speak to us at the Center.
A Small Step Toward Redemption
This display was deeply moving. The work itself is
breathtaking and the display that provided the history of the woman depicted
and the artist’s loving process of production made that encounter even more
meaningful. That was particularly true given my own life trajectory for the
past few years.
Since 2016, I have worked with a group in Orlando, the Alliance for Truth and Justice, which has sought to commemorate the rash of lynchings that occurred in the early to mid-20th CE and the massacre of the African-American community in Ocoee, the same time frame in which Kirby Smith’s sculpture was sent to the Capitol. Our work has taken me from overgrown scrubland where an African-American community once stood near Ocoee to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery.
It was there I would represent Willie Vincent, an African-American agricultural laborer who had been tossed from a moving car onto the asphalt of US 441 near Oakland. He had died alone and no record of his death, much less his burial, exists. With no descendants or family of record to represent him, I attended the dedication of his memorial in Montgomery on his behalf and on behalf of our organization.
That dedication came only days after I had been leafing
through family documents my Dad’s genealogy work had left behind only to
discover for the first time that I was the descendant of a family who had
enslaved other human beings. It was a great shock to me. And at that moment,
the white privilege I had become aware of on an academic level suddenly became
very real to me on a personal level.
I believe that it is the obligation of all Americans to know all of our history, warts and all. Loving our country requires knowing all of its story. That’s a lot more demanding than merely admiring its bright and shiny persona. It is only when we are able to hold our actual history together with our finest ideals that we can even begin truly loving our country.
Such knowledge is essential to the soul work of repentance
- the rethinking of our understandings including the willingness to own the
harm they have caused - and redemption. The work that our local organization engages in Orlando seeks to transform the evil that has occurred
in our past and insure that its legacies will not continue to impact our lives
in the future. As Franciscan Richard Rohr often observes, that brokenness which
we do not transform, we transmit.
Removing a
Confederate soldier’s statue from the National Statuary Hall that has brought
shame to our state for nearly a century is a long overdue act of repentance. It
is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual recognition of a
history of wrongdoing and an expression of contrition that is appropriate in
light of that recognition.
Replacing the statue of a traitor with an exquisite marble
rendition of one of Florida’s finest citizens, an African-American woman who
called people live into their best and highest potentials, brings honor to this
state I love. But perhaps more importantly, it is a first, small step in the
long road to redemption.
Sometimes even the Florida Man gets it right.
[N.B., Many thanks to Dr. Connie E. Rivers-Mitchell for her expert guided tour. The official site for the display can be accessed below. Admission is free and available through Eventbrite]
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando, Florida
If the unexamined life is not worth living,
surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth
holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.
Those who believe religion and politics aren't
connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi
For what does G-d require of you but to do
justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew
Scriptures
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the
world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not
obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi
Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry Coverston, 2021
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