In Key West, there’s a push to rename — not tear down — a Confederate monument
A Key West city commissioner wants to rename a memorial to fallen Confederate soldiers, replacing it with the island’s official motto that declares all are equal.
The memorial, a white pavilion with twin columns at each corner, was installed at Bayview Park in 1924 by the local chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.
If the Key West City Commission approves a proposal on its Sept. 16 meeting agenda, the pavilion and a nearby bandstand will become the “One Human Family Pavilion.”
The virtual meeting starts at 5 p.m. and will air on the city’s website.
At a time when cities in the United States are removing Confederate war monuments, this proposal only seeks to rename the structure.
“It reclaims the space in an appropriate way,” said Vice Mayor Sam Kaufman, who has been studying the history of the memorial and how it inspired a few Ku Klux Klan events in Key West over the years, including a parade in 1924 and a rally in 1992.
“It’s a place the Ku Klux Klan identified as their space, even up until 1992,” Kaufman said.
Kaufman said he isn’t calling to tear it down, noting it would be different if it were a statue of a Confederate leader.
He isn’t even asking that the memorial’s dedication plaques be removed.
“This is just a four-column structure,” Kaufman said. “Naming it the ‘One Human Pavilion,’ that accomplishes what we all want, to say hate is not accepted here. But it’s a good reminder we have to be vigilant.”
The 1992 Klan event at Bayview drew 200 protesters and a half-dozen Klan members from out of town, according to a report in Florida Today.
The Klan fared far better in 1924, though, after the Confederate monument went up, with a parade that drew hundreds of onlookers and 75 Klan members in white robes, the Key West Citizen wrote in February 1924.
The Citizen also reported that the Klan in Key West at the time had received 690 applications for membership.
The memorial was dedicated in 1924 on Jan. 19 — in honor of the birthday of Confederate Army Gen. Robert E. Lee.
“This one is almost benign,” said Commissioner Clayton Lopez, of the Confederate memorial at Bayview. “If it were a statue hailing some person that was supposed to have been a war hero in the Civil War, then I would be tremendously against it.”
Lopez, who said he is pleased by Kaufman’s proposal, said the Confederate memorial tells the whole story of American history.
“It’s a dark part of Civil Rights history as well,” said Lopez, who is Black. “We know the Daughters of the Confederacy, that whole movement, was put in place to ‘remind’ Blacks of their station and their status.”
Instead of calling to tear it down, the two commissioners support renaming it after the city’s motto, which was created by local artist J.T. Thompson.
“One Human Family” was declared the island’s official philosophy in October 2000, in a proclamation signed by then-Mayor Jimmy Weekley.
“We truly believe that all other people are our equals during our short lives here on Earth,” the proclamation states.
Key West had the Confederate memorial restored in 2015.
A year later, the city authorized a sculpture of a Black Union soldier to go up at Bayview to honor Black Key West residents who fought for the Union.
The Black soldier sculpture is steps away from the Confederate memorial.
Key West was in the Union’s hands throughout the Civil War.
You have to look carefully to find the Confederate memorial’s dedication plaques. One, which reads, “To the soldiers and the sailors of the Confederacy,” is partially blocked by some rogue plant roots.
“It was put there as a memorial,” said Tom Hambright, a revered Key West historian who works out of the Monroe County Public Library branch on Fleming Street. “I don’t consider memorials to glorify the people. People died. Some people think anything that mentions the Confederacy is glorifying slavery.”
Bayview Park is home to a number of war memorials, including one dedicated to those who fought and died in the Vietnam War. It was dedicated in 2015.
Also at Bayview is another monument that honors soldiers from New York stationed during the Civil War in Key West and who died of yellow fever and other diseases.
This story was originally published September 11, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
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