Confederate banner flies over Downtown Jacksonville yet again

Save Southern Heritage flies over Jax. Image via Lauren Steif.

Jacksonville’s complicated history with confederate monuments is back in the present tense Tuesday.

The Save Southern Heritage group flew a plane above downtown Tuesday morning with a confederate battle flag and what appears to be the message “Curry: Stop the Hate.”

That message is a reference to Mayor Lenny Curry, a Republican who has repeatedly pushed to have monuments removed, with the one in what is now James Weldon Johnson Park gone as of 2020. A second one, a tribute to confederate women, remains in Springfield Park with no clear timetable for movement.

A statement from the group, in the form of a photograph of typewritten City Council public comments from H.R. Edgerton, accused Curry of demonstrating “hate” to confederate veterans and the women who loved them.

As the plane flew overhead, meanwhile, City Hall staffers were discovering bullet holes in a window near where the mayor sits daily. Another spokesman for the group, Kirk D. Lyons, said Save Southern Heritage had nothing to do with that “potshot at the mayor” through a fourth floor window.

“We’re peace, love, and dove,” Lyons contended during a phone call Tuesday. “Nobody was shooting out of the airplane, that I can assure you.”

This group has already flown to show its disapproval once. Ahead of the Jaguars’ game against the Baltimore Ravens, a plane funded by Save Southern Heritage flew a banner above TIAA Bank Field calling for the restoration of confederate statues in Jacksonville.

Curry expressed his disapproval then in a tweet: “As I’ve said before, there is no place for hate of any kind in our City. My position on monuments remains clear, I have allocated money for removal and empowered city council to take action.”

Gov. Ron DeSantis would not condemn the incident when asked, meanwhile, preferring to blast reporters.

“I’m concerned when people in the media take some jabroni that nobody cares about and will try to elevate them and make them some type of celebrity,” said DeSantis.

The incident comes just weeks after the Florida-Georgia Game, one of the biggest events on Jacksonville’s cultural calendar, was marred with antisemitic messages displayed at the stadium and elsewhere in town.

They first surfaced on an overpass on Interstate 10 in western Duval County. A banner urged drivers to “end Jewish supremacy” and “honk if you know it was the Jews.” Another one surfaced on Arlington Expressway, extolling Kanye West for being “right about the Jews.”

After the football game downtown, similar messages were broadcast on the stadium and other downtown buildings.

On behalf of the Southern Heritage group, Lyons denied any affinity with West’s messages Tuesday.

The City Council rejected a proposal in June to slot $500,000 for monument removal, with “alternative funding” sought to cover inevitable cost overage. What’s clear is this issue remains a live one, especially in the face of the City Council’s inaction.

___

This is a developing story and may be updated.