The senate seal, which includes depictions of a Confederate flag and four others that have flown over the state throughout its history, has come under criticism since the summer.
Advertisement
The Senate Rules Committee unanimously voted to change the seal and eliminate the rebel battle flag.
Separate legislation, which would require the removal of the Confederate flag from all government buildings, is also filed for the 2016 session which begins in January.
The Senate Rules Committee’s recommendation, which follows a request by Senate President Andy Gardiner and Senate Minority Leader Arthenia Joyner to re-examine the flag’s place on the seal, is another sign of a backlash against the symbols of the South’s rebellion in the 1860s.
Since 1972, the Seal of the Florida Senate has contained a fan of five flags flying over a golden disk with a gavel, quill and scroll and the words “In God We Trust” engraved in it. Included among the banners is the Confederate Flag. “We can’t revise history and choose which moments in our history to forget, but we can choose what we highlight in our seal and what is just and right”. Darren Soto, D-Orlando, in supporting the change.
Along with the state flag, the USA flag and banners representing France, Spain and Great Britain would remain on the seal. But they replaced it with the Confederate flag known as the stars and bars, depicting 13 stars in a circle next to horizontal red and white bars.
The request for change came after the Charleston, South Carolina shootings this summer, when a white man shot and killed members of traditionally black Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a group Bible study.
“I don’t think many of us have really taken a real look at our seal to see what those flags were”, Joyner said.
“I can remember it without seeing it on my lapel every day”, she told reporters after the meeting. Geraldine Thompson, D-Orlando, and Rep. Darryl Rouson, D-St.
Advertisement
But it was impossible to escape the shadow that the Confederate flag has long cast over the politics of Florida and other Southern states.
