The city commission of Hollywood, Florida, has voted to rename local streets commemorating Confederate generals including Robert E. Lee and others, as monuments and tributes to Civil War soldiers with ties to slavery continue to come down in the old South and beyond.
Hollywood lawmakers voted 5-1 in favor of changing the names of streets currently honoring Lee, John Bell Hood and Nathan Bedford Forrest, following nearly six hours of debate Wednesday evening and setting the stage for the commission to decide on the new street names at a later date.
“These streets are symbols of men whose deeds symbolized oppression and bigotry against a whole group of people,” Mayor Josh Levy, a Republican and one of the five commissioners who voted for the renaming, said during the meeting. “We don’t endorse hate; we don’t endorse symbols of hate.”
Five of the panel’s six white members voted for the renaming, while the commission’s lone Hispanic, Peter Hernandez, walked out before casting a ballot in protest of “a Democratic national agenda that is being pushed upon us,” The Associated Press reported.
Normally a name change would require the approval of impacted residents, but the commission voted 5-2 early last month to waive that policy in order to expedite the process.
“I can’t support cherry-picking, and I can’t support the process, the way it was done,” said Mr. Hernandez, a Democrat.
Nonetheless, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce and more than half of the 130 or so people who signed up to speak during Wednesday’s meeting supported the renaming effort, the AP reported, including U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and state Rep. Joe Geller, both Democrats.
“There is no shortage of hatred in the world,” said Ms. Wasserman Schultz, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman, the Sun-Sentinel reported. “We cannot let hatred win here today. Confederate generals should be studied in textbooks and museums. But they should not be honored on our streets.”
“Living on a street named after him is like being asked to live on Hitler Street,” Mr. Geller added. “This is a problem. You have the power to fix it. Please fix it.”
Critics have spent decades fighting for the removal of racist memorials, statues and other tributes throughout the U.S. Their efforts gained steam after a white supremacist rally — held after Charlottesville, Virginia, decided to remove a monument commemorating Lee, a Confederate army general — ended in the death of a counterprotester earlier this month.
While not as renowned as Lee, Hood and Forrest served as Confederate generals during the American Civil War, and both participated in the Battle of Nashville, among other skirmishes. Forrest later became an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist hate group that remains active today.
At least one person was arrested by police prior to Wednesday’s meeting while protesting the slated renaming, local media reported.
“Nathan Bedford Forrest, Hood and Lee were all good Christian men who fought for the South and the Southern nation,” the protester, 22-year-old Christopher Rey Monzon, told the Sun-Sentinel prior to being arrested. “We need to defend our heritage and identity in the South — and our history.”
Mr. Monzon was charged with aggravated assault, disorderly conduct and inciting a riot, the newspaper reported.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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