Perspective: Reflecting on the Removal of the Springfield Park Confederate Statue

December 27, 2023 - Great cities are anchored by inclusive public spaces that welcome all. The Jessie Ball duPont Fund helped fund the removal of the Springfield Park Confederate statue so that our public spaces might be more welcoming and inclusive for all Jaxsons. Removing – but not erasing – statues that commemorate the Confederacy from public lands is critical to creating communities where everyone feels they belong. 

We applaud Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan’s bold action and clarity of vision. We are grateful to nonprofit partners like 904ward who are leading equity work in our city. 

What we do next as a city is perhaps even more important than the removal of the monument. 

What we do next as a city will determine the extent to which we can come together to agree on how to design inclusive public spaces where we will welcome all. To do so, we will need to find ways to talk to each other about how we want to collectively shape our different public spaces, and our future. 

The Fund will continue contributing to that process by hosting a public event and community conversation on February 13 about southern legacy with retired brigadier general and West Point historian Ty Seidule. You can learn more and register here. This continues our engagement on the issue of monuments and commemoration, which dates back more than five years, starting with hosting a series of community conversations about what to do with our Confederate monuments, and the longstanding offer from two years ago to pay for and facilitate additional public conversations in response to City Council interest. 

Engaging with our own legacy

Over the past five years, the Jessie Ball duPont Fund Trustees and staff have embarked on a journey of understanding and acknowledging Jessie’s beliefs, working within a framework of acknowledging our history, reconciling with the communities that were and are impacted, and repairing the harms caused by her beliefs. Today, the duPont Fund is actively working to make the communities Jessie supported more accessible and more inclusive. We do this through our grantmaking, such as by supporting scholarships for Black students at a former segregation academy; and a more inclusive telling of history at Stratford Hall, Robert E. Lee’s birthplace. We also do it through impact investing, research, and convenings; and through public-private partnerships such as the building of Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing Park in Jacksonville. Learn more about our work here. 

We are continuing our internal work as well, including working with Yale historian and legacy expert Connor Williams to fully understand the breadth and intention of Jessie’s giving. The research has helped us understand a critically important framing of our reality: Jessie was an incredibly generous philanthropist AND she was a segregationist who believed in white supremacy and who sometimes used her funding to uphold her beliefs. We hold these truths simultaneously. 

As the Trustees and staff who are tasked with administering a fund that bears Jessie’s name, we hold the responsibility to continue enhancing the good that has come from her commitment to using her resources to help others, and to repair the harm that was caused by her actions.

Expanding the conversation in our home city of Jacksonville

As we further explore our own legacy, we are actively searching for ways to use our learning to help build more inclusive spaces in the communities we serve. We are excited to be bringing to Jacksonville author and historian Ty Seidule, author of Robert E. Lee and Me: A Southerner’s Reckoning with the Myth of the Lost Cause. If you’re not familiar with his work, Ty revered Robert E. Lee and the “Lost Cause” myth of the Civil War while growing up in Virginia and Georgia. During his time in the Army and through his training as a historian, his view has radically changed – and he now believes that American history demands a reckoning.

In many ways, Ty’s personal journey reckoning with the myth of the Lost Cause of the “honorable Confederacy” mirrors our journey reckoning with the reality Jessie’s beliefs and the damage they caused: both require deep work and intentional learning – and in some cases, un-learning – to acknowledge, reconcile and begin the important work of repair. 

We look forward to sharing more about our own journey as we continue making progress. In the meantime, we hope you’ll join us on February 13 for our conversation with Ty.