JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – The Confederate monument in Springfield represents different things to different people.
Some say it’s a big piece of Southern history, while others say it’s a symbol of racism, slavery and oppression.
On Wednesday morning, there were cheers from a crowd of onlookers as a crew brought down the monument to honor the ‘Women of the Confederacy’ at Jacksonville’s Springfield Park, formerly known as Confederate Park, 108 years after it went up during the Jim Crow era.
“[The monument] was used as a tactic to intimidate African Americans,” said Adonnica Toler, historian and director of the Eartha White Museum. White was a prominent Black businesswoman and philanthropist and the daughter of a slave.
A similar Confederate monument stood outside Jacksonville City Hall until the city, led by Republican Mayor Lenny Curry, took it down in 2020 under the cover of darkness.
“And if you notice, most [Confederate monuments] are around government, they’re usually around City Hall. They’re around government buildings, most of them are at a place that’s close to the center of power,” Toler said.
In 1915, the Florida Legislature paid for half of the $25,000 it cost to build the statue that sat in Springfield Park until Wednesday.
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Toler said there is still a place for statues and monuments that represent the Confederacy — a group of states that declared secession and went to war against the United States before being defeated following four years of fighting that resulted in an estimated 620,000 total soldier deaths.
“They should be, if there could be a museum for them or a space that is created for them,” Toler said. “And let’s have conversations about what those monuments mean and what it means to us, for African Americans, to see it.”
Toler said some of the sentiments held amid the dark history of slavery and segregation during the Jim Crow era live on today.
“And I think this is one of those things that it’s a very powerful, sensitive, hurtful, shameful thing to address. But it has to be addressed for growth and development, to move to the next level of prosperity and success,” Toler said.
As she stood Wednesday in the home Eartha White once lived in, at the mission she built to help people of all races, Toler believes the woman who saw a lot of love and hate in her life from 1876 to 1974 would be proud.
“I congratulate everyone who worked hard, you can see for many years, that challenge, they have been challenging that and fighting that. And so I know others will be upset about it, but when you talk about the spirit of why they were installed, it is only right that they come down now,” Toler said.
The statue from Springfield Park was taken to a warehouse in Brentwood, but it’s unclear what will happen with it in the future.
There are still other, lesser-known, Confederate markers around Jacksonville.
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On the Northbank Riverwalk, there’s a plaque commemorating the Sinking of the Maple Leaf. At the Old City Cemetery near the sports complex, there are headstones for Confederate soldiers, and there’s a sign at the Prime Osborn Convention Center marking the line of entrenchment in the Civil War.
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