The editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun-Sentinel wrote a joint editorial questioning the wisdom of setting aside a day to honor Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this year. They titled it “A Badly Misguided Honor for Charlie Kirk.”
Their editorial courage is a tribute to freedom of the press, which Charlie would have applauded.
In a society that treasures and protects free speech, it’s important to focus a spotlight on people who were hunted down because their ideas were too dangerous or offended too many people.
These names are threaded through the history of this nation, and of Florida as well. Teaching schoolchildren and reminding everyone of their importance is a worthy endeavor. But such efforts should be comprehensive. Unfortunately, Florida’s latest attempt at recognition is not.
A bill predictably likely to pass the Florida Legislature calls for every October 14, Charlie Kirk’s birthday, to be a statewide “Day of Remembrance” — forever. A Senate committee already passed it on a party-line 5 to 2 vote, with only Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Orlando (herself the daughter of civil-rights activists) and Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, voting no.
They meant no offense — nor do we — to the humanity of Kirk, who was shot during a speech to university students in Utah three months ago. And it’s important to note that, while most people associated with the concept of civil rights won that recognition for defending and uplifting freedom, many of Kirk’s positions called for the curtailment of rights and the erasure of personal liberty.
Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, inspired many people with his conservative activism, but he alienated many others with his pointed attacks.
He denounced the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful,” and “not a good person.” He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.” He said the pop star Taylor Swift should change her name if she marries her fiancé Travis Kelce, as a sign of submission to him. He said gun murders were an acceptable price to pay for the right to own them. And on and on.
Whatever his views, Kirk had every right to express them to anyone willing to listen. That’s the American way. But the Legislature should be mindful of how hurtful some of his views were.
It goes without saying that his murder was a crime to be deplored by everyone, not just his conservative admirers. But elevating him with an officially recognized annual commemoration while ignoring other heroes with legitimate ties to Florida makes no sense.
One obvious, and tragically overlooked, example comes from Central Florida. Harry T. Moore, a Florida civil rights pioneer, was murdered when a Ku Klux Klan bomb planted under his bedroom blew up his home in Mims on Christmas night 1951. His wife, Harriette, died of her injuries a few days later. As an NAACP field secretary, Moore campaigned successfully for Black teachers to be paid the same as whites and to register more Black voters in Florida than any other Southern state.
He initiated the long and ultimately successful movement to vindicate four Black men unjustly accused in the infamous 1949 Groveland rape case.
No one was ever convicted of the bombing, although a KKK member committed suicide after being questioned by the FBI. A federal indictment against others was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.
The Moores are included in Florida social-studies curriculum, but too often go in unmentioned in the roll call of civil rights martyrs. They were left off the martyr’s memorial in Montgomery, Ala., because of an arbitrary definition of the Civil Rights Era as having begun with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But they died for the cause just as certainly as anyone else did.
And if Florida wants to commemorate Kirk, who lacked significant ties to Florida, our nation’s history is replete with other examples of courage.
Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner were the young civil rights volunteers kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964 for trying to register Black voters. Eight men eventually got relatively light federal sentences for the killings. Forty-one years later, Mississippi convicted a chief perpetrator. He died in prison.
Medgar Evers was the Mississippi civil rights activist shot to death outside his home in 1963. It took until 1994 to convict his killer, who died in prison.
Harvey Milk, elected to San Francisco government on a platform that included human rights for same-sex couples, was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978.
Those are only a few of many private citizens who paid with their lives for speaking out for what they believed.
Others include the abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy and Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who died at the hands of mobs in Illinois a century ago.
To commemorate only one such victim, as Senate Bill 194 and HB 125 do, is not appropriate. But at least it’s less inappropriate than legislation that aims to rename streets for Kirk at every Florida state college and university.
A Day of Remembrance should honor not one martyr, but many, and right-wing political views should not be a prerequisite.
The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
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