JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — It's a monument that has stood in Jacksonville for more than 100 years. The Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy resides in Springfield Park - formerly known as Confederate Park - but once again there is a new push to take the monument down.
On the heels of new legislation being proposed at the state level to keep confederate monuments in place, the Northside Coalition will submit a complaint to the Jacksonville Human Rights Commission stating that the confederate monument in Springfield Park is a violation of their human rights. It's a sentiment that Mayor Donna Deegan agrees with.
"It is my belief that the monument should come down, it needs to not be in a park that is in the middle of a Black community and it needs to come down," said Deegan.
That's a sentiment that citizens of Jacksonville have heard from past mayors. After a statue of a confederate soldier was removed from the top of a monument in James Weldon Johnson Park in May of 2020, then-mayor Lenny Curry spoke to an assembled crowd.
"And the others in this city will be removed as well," said Curry in May 2020.
The monument in Springfield Park still stands and on November 9th Florida House Representative Dean Black filed legislation to prevent municipalities from removing confederate monuments.
"When we sanitize the state of all markers to our history 100 years from now people will say the civil war, that never happened, slavery, that's just a myth," Black to First Coast News on November 13th.
This is the second time Black has proposed legislation like this.
"Every legal entity that I have spoke to about that proposed law has said to me that it's wholly unconstitutional," said Deegan, "it's constitutional overreach and it's offensive to a lot of folks in that community."
She also says that this legislation will not define her decision. "I cannot make decisions about this city based on threats," Deegan said.
Last year Early Johnson Jr. sued the state of Florida and the city of Jacksonville to halt all tax payer funding to the support of confederate monuments.
"These confederate monuments are symbols of white supremacy ideology, this is not about history," Johnson Jr. told First Coast News on March 16, 2023.
His lawsuit was dismissed. Currently Black's bill about confederate monuments is in the State Affairs Committee. If that bill becomes law then the governor could remove elected officials from office if they vote to remove confederate monuments.