Battle over confederate general statue for Lake County could head to court

LAKE COUNTY, Fla. — The battle against bringing a confederate statue to Lake County is heating up.

The group fighting to keep the statue out of the county filed a lawsuit, saying the county violated sunshine laws when working behind closed doors to land the statue.

The group says they are convinced the process to bring the statue to the county was flawed, and they believe the only way to fix this is with help from the courts.

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“Everything was done in secret,” said Mae Hazelton, a member of Lake Voices of Reason, a group formed to stop the confederate statue of General Edmund Kirby Smith from being brought to the Lake County Historical Museum.

In 2016, Gov. Rick Scott signed a bill to remove the statue from Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., and replaced it with a statue of Florida civil rights pioneer Mary McLeod Bethune.

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One of the group’s major issues with the statue is that the general doesn’t have any ties to Lake County.

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