Advocates who opposed removing a Confederate monument in Lakeland’s Munn Park are not giving up, despite the fact that they have been unsuccessful in the courts since the monument was moved to a nearby park in 2019.

At a press conference held in Munn Park in Lakeland last Friday, David McCallister, an attorney with Save Southern Heritage, said that he had filed a petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to have the justices consider his group’s appeal of a lawsuit against the city of Lakeland for removing the monument. Among those joining McCallister at the press conference was Lakeland mayoral candidate Saga Stevin.

“This whole thing is about free speech,” she said after being introduced by McCallister. “And no one should be muzzled. We need to debate these issues in a public forum. Such as a town square. Not tear these statutes down.”

More than 160 such Confederate symbols were removed in 2020 alone, and more than 200 since 2015, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. But Stevin says she thinks it’s the wrong thing to do.

“It’s been there over 100 years. We’ve had a Black mayor before. It didn’t seem to bother anyone then. It wasn’t brought up. It wasn’t brought up until these activists and these groups started coming in.”

That Black mayor referenced by Stevin is Gow Fields, who was elected in 2009 and served one term in office. Spectrum Bay News 9 reached out to him for comment.

“If she had been more engaged and knew more about this community, then she would have understood that it was a long standing concern dating back to before I was born of the African-American community and those who believe in telling the truth about not only this country’s history, but this community’s history,” Fields said.

Although she grew up in Lakeland, Stevin lived in Minneapolis for more than two decades before she moved back the city in 2020. She says that monuments like the one that was removed from Munn Park in early 2019 is “history.”

“It’s the same reason that Jews don’t want Auschwitz torn down,” she said while speaking with Bay News 9 outside her campaign office on Wednesday. “I don’t think that anything should be torn down or moved, because it prompts conversation.”

In its petition, McCallister writes that “this case has the potential to affect public spaces all across America and settle the current state of unrest, if the Court will give guidance as to the limits of governmental speech, and the supremacy of established free speech.”

After public debate, the Lakeland City Commission voted in December 2017 to move the monument from its location in downtown Lakeland to nearby Veterans Park. The city ended up using revenue from red-light cameras to fund the move after an effort to raise the funds by private funds faltered. The monument was moved in March 2019.

Lakeland Mayor Bill Mutz says there was “lots of public input” before the Commission ultimately decided to move the monument.  

“We had many commission meetings,” he said this week. “We had hours of people providing input and opinion in the process of that.  We engaged the community broadly. And so it is interesting to me - she was not here then, so I think that’s why she maybe didn’t see or was not aware of that happening. But this was not done quickly, this was done very deliberately.”

“The way the whole thing was done, I believe the citizens were lied to,” she says. “I believe that they were snookered, and I don’t think that it was right at all.”

In a response sent to Spectrum Bay News 9 after this story originally posted, Mutz said that wasn’t accurate.

“We had mutually exclusive money available for that effort, as well,” he said. “It did not impact it whatsoever.”

The national movement to remove Confederate symbols began in South Carolina in 2015, after Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, fatally shot nine Black worshippers at a historic Black Church in Charleson, S.C. In the immediate aftermath of those killings, photos emerged showing Roof posing with the Confederate battle flag. That led then South Carolina Republican Governor Nikki Haley to push to remove the Confederate flag from the state Capitol.

Stevin says that while she has spoken against the moving of the monument, it is by no means a top priority of hers if she wins office next week. “My top priority is the safety of all the citizens in Lakeland. My top priority is the Police and Fire (departments).”

Mayor Mutz says he’s happy that the issue is in the past.

“I love the fact that we can move on to the things that are in front of us and the opportunities ahead I’m looking forward to some of the best days in Lakeland that we’ve ever had,” he says.

The election is next Tuesday, Nov. 2.