Amber Randall on March 20, 2018
The governor of Florida ordered a Confederate statue be removed from the U.S. Capitol building and a statue of a black woman put in its place Tuesday.
GOP Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill requesting one of Florida’s two Capitol Building statues be of an influential black woman, The Associated Press reported.
The statue honoring Confederate Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith will be replaced with one of Mary Bethune, a black woman who started the historically black Bethune-Cookman University.
The statue of Bethune will be the first one of a black woman in Statuary Hall. Each state is allowed to honor two people they believe contributed to their state. States are also allowed to change their statues as they want, as a Congressional act permitted in 2000.
Other states have also taken to removing their Confederate statues and replacing them with historical black figures. Baltimore, Md., recently erected a statue of Harriet Tubman in lieu of a Confederate one.
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