We’re just days away from an official Florida holiday that honors the war dead.
The Confederate war dead.
Florida remains one of a handful of Southern states that still has a separate, state-sanctioned legal holiday for the soldiers who fought to secede from the union in order to preserve the institution of slavery. Confederate Memorial Day in Florida is on April 26, the day Gen. Joseph Johnston surrendered the Army of Tennessee.
As if that’s not enough of a rebellion celebration, Florida has a holiday honoring the general who led the Confederate forces, Robert E. Lee (Jan. 19), and another holiday to honor the president of the breakaway states, Jefferson Davis (June 3).
Here’s what Florida does not have: An official holiday that commemorates the end of slavery.
State Sen. Randolph Bracy of Ocoee is trying to change that with a bill to designate June 19 as Juneteenth Day, a legal holiday in the state of Florida. Juneteenth Day currently is a day of observance in Florida, a step down from a legal holiday. Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, and informed Black men and women they were free.
Bracy’s bill has been moving through the Senate, passing two committees with unanimous votes. But a companion bill in the House of Representatives has gone nowhere.
Another bill that hasn’t gotten anywhere is Sen. Lauren Book’s proposal to eliminate the state holidays that celebrate those who took up arms against their nation. Her bill also would cancel a portion of state law that makes it a crime to deface any of the various Confederate flags, including the battle flag that’s become a symbol of hate. Her bill hasn’t even gotten a committee hearing.
To summarize: The Florida Legislature wants to keep holidays that honor those who fought to continue slavery, but doesn’t want to create a legal holiday marking the end of slavery.
This all might seem like symbolic small potatoes. It’s not. It fits the pattern of a state that consistently demonstrates its disregard for Black and brown Floridians.
To wit: The state Legislature passed, and the governor just signed, a bill cracking down on protests, a law that was hatched by Gov. Ron DeSantis in response to the protests over the killing of a Black man, George Floyd, by a white police officer in Minneapolis.
Don’t be fooled. This bill is advertised as a means to deal with rioters. Its real intent is to frighten would-be protesters from taking to the streets at all.
Why else would the bill’s provisions be so sweeping that nonviolent protesters who find themselves caught in the middle of a riot also be subject to a felony charge? Or deny bail to those arrested? Or provide legal protections to motorists who mow down protesters with a car? Or make vandalizing a statue (including Confederate statues) a felony?
What are Black Floridians to think when the political bosses in this state are so eager to assign new, tougher penalties to protests without making any effort to understand the underlying causes of those protests?
And what are Black Floridians to think when not one of the more than two dozen people surrounding DeSantis Monday during a bill-signing ceremony looked like them?
The answers to those questions can be attributed, at least in part, to politicians pandering to a largely white political base in Florida that simply doesn’t care if the state creates a whole new class of felons out of protesters, most of whom are trying to exercise their First Amendment rights.
It’s the same political base that wouldn’t take kindly to ending holidays that celebrate the dishonorable deeds of men more than 150 years ago.
