Friday is Confederate Memorial Day. Why does Florida still celebrate it and what does it mean?
Florida does not seem to want to let go of its Confederate heritage.
On Friday, April 26, the state of Florida officially honors the Floridians who took up arms in the Confederate battle against the United States of America in the Civil War.
Confederate Memorial Day is one of three Confederate holidays — along with the birthdays of General Robert E. Lee and Confederate States President Jefferson Davis — still on the books in the Sunshine State after well over a century, despite numerous attempts to remove them. Supporters say they honor the bravery and sacrifices of the people involved and are not an endorsement of what they fought for.
The holidays were added across the South during the years after Reconstruction, historians say, when Confederate supporters were promoting the false "Lost Cause" mythology, reshaping Southern textbooks, renaming cities and counties, downplaying the causes of the war and the evils of slavery, creating Jim Crow laws, and erecting monuments in public squares to glorify Confederate leaders.
There has been a revitalized movement to remove such tributes in recent years, especially after 2015 when white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina in what he said was an effort to bring back segregation or start a race war.
News and videos of police brutality and systemic racism, high-profile cases like the deaths of Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor, and increasingly violent protests, shootings and bomb threats by white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups in the years after that led to widespread protests and demonstrations calling for a renewed push for social and racial justice.
Some Confederate statues and plaques have been removed and many schools, parks and military bases have seen name changes. But while some state holidays have been quietly renamed or dropped from "paid day off" status, they still remain enshrined in many states' laws, and there has been increased pushback against further Confederacy removal.
What Confederate holidays does Florida observe?
Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 19
Confederate Memorial Day, April 26
Jefferson Davis' birthday, June 3
What is Confederate Memorial Day?
Confederate Memorial Day was started in Georgia in April 1866 to commemorate the deaths of Confederate soldiers on the first anniversary of the day that Confederate Gen. Joseph Johnson surrendered the Army of Tennessee to Union Gen. William Sherman in Bennett Place, North Carolina, which many in the Confederacy felt marked the end of the Civil War. Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to Gen. Ulysses S. Grant two weeks earlier.
The holiday spread to the other 10 Confederate states with some changing it to locally important dates.
Does Florida have any other Confederate laws?
Florida state law goes into some detail to protect the Confederate flag as much as the state one. In Florida Statute 256.051, it says:
'It shall be unlawful for any person, firm, or corporation to copy, print, publish, or otherwise use the flag or state emblem of Florida, or the flag or emblem of the Confederate States, or any flag or emblem used by the Confederate States or the military or naval forces of the Confederate States at any time within the years 1860 to 1865, both inclusive, for the purpose of advertising, selling, or promoting the sale of any article of merchandise whatever within this state."
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When did Florida add Confederate holidays to state law?
Confederate Memorial Day and Lee's birthday were enshrined in Florida law in 1895, 30 years after the end of the Civil War. Jefferson Davis Day was added in 1905.
Does Florida recognize Confederate Memorial Day and other Confederate holidays as paid holidays?
No. The three Confederate holidays are legal holidays but not official state ones. Other legal holidays in Florida include Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, Good Friday, Pascua Florida Day (which marks the discovery of Florida in 1513) and Flag Day.
This year Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day was added as the state's 22nd state holiday.
Which states celebrate Confederate Memorial Day?
State holiday, paid: Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas
State holiday unpaid: Florida, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennesee
Recognized: Louisiana, Missouri, Virginia, and sort-of Georgia
Georgia previously commemorated Lee in November and Confederate Memorial Day in April but in 2015 (after the Charleston shooting) both holidays were replaced with unnamed "State Holidays."
Why does Florida still have Confederate holidays?
An attempt by Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Coral Springs, in 2018 to remove the holidays failed, as did an ambitious bill the same year from Sen. Shevrin D. Jones, D-Miami Gardens, that would have removed every monument in the state erected, named or dedicated in commemoration of any aspect of the Confederate States of America or any white nationalist organizations and relocated them to the Museum of Florida History.
Senate Minority Leader Lauren Book, D-Davie, has tried three times to have Confederate holidays stricken from Florida Statutes, starting in 2017 after the deadly rallies in Charlottesville, North Carolina. She tried again in 2021 and 2022 and tried to strike not only the holidays but the laws protecting "the flags of the Confederacy." All three of Book's bills died in committee.
"As a State, we must underscore diversity and undercut tributes to Confederacy, which upheld the institution of slavery," Book said in a statement in 2021. "With the hate and divisiveness we're seeing today, it is more important than ever to condemn racism and reaffirm that we are indeed 'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all — not just for some."
All such bills have faced intense opposition in the Florida Legislature from lawmakers who say that Confederate holidays and memorials represent history and heritage, and they object to what they call the erasure of history and the rise of "cancel culture."
'“I always have a bit of pain in my heart when I realize people don’t want to respect each other's history,” Sen. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, whose great, great, great grandfather fought for the Confederacy, said about the 2022 bill. “The good, the bad, and the ugly.”
Confederate statue removal almost made illegal in Florida
A bill filed for the 2024 Florida Legislative Session would have removed from office any elected official responsible for removing Florida's Confederate memorials and added fines and damages to anyone who did it. It also would have required that any monuments or historical markers that had been removed be put back, and would have been made retroactive back to January 2017. Sen. Jonathan Martin, R-Fort Myers, filed a companion bill in the Senate to remove control of historical monuments from local governments.
HB 395's sponsor, Rep. Dean Black, R-Jacksonville, and his co-sponsors argued that it applied to all historical monuments, not just Confederate ones. Neither bill contained the word "Confederate."
The bills came just a few months after Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan ordered the removal of a controversial Springfield Confederate monument.
While both bills had strong GOP support, numerous White nationalists spoke out in favor of the Senate bill due to “the cultural war being waged against White society," causing even some legislators in support of the bill to recoil. Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Green Cove Island, called the remarks “vile, bigoted, racist, and ... what is tearing apart our state.”
Senate President Kathleen Passidomo, R-Naples, ultimately put on the brakes over "problems in perceptions among our caucus."
"I’m not going to bring a bill to the floor that is so abhorrent to everybody," she said. Both bills later died in committee.
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Confederate Memorial Day a Florida state holiday, despite opposition
