Tallahassee, FL -With little discussion, a Senate committee Thursday approved a plan to place a statue of civil-rights leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune in the U.S. Capitol as a representative of Florida.
The unanimous approval by the Rules Committee readied the proposal (SB 472 and SCR 184), sponsored by Sen. Perry Thurston, D-Fort Lauderdale, to go to the full Senate. The issue has been high-profile because the statue of Bethune would replace a likeness of Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, who has long represented Florida in the National Statuary Hall in Washington.
The Legislature voted in 2016 to replace the Smith statue during a nationwide backlash against Confederate symbols in the wake of the 2015 shooting deaths of nine African-American worshippers at a historic black church in Charleston, S.C. But lawmakers last year did not reach agreement on whose likeness should replace Smith. A House proposal (HB 139) backing a Bethune statue has also started moving forward.
(Mary McLeod Bethune)
