Florida Museum of Black History Task Force Chair, Sen. Geraldine Thompson, seeks comments from communities around the state regarding the creation of the museum. PHOTO COURTESY OF X.COM

MIAMI- Florida residents will have an opportunity to give input on the type of programming content for the first-ever state-run Florida Museum of Black History and suggestions for the location for the building.

The newly minted Florida Museum of Black History Task Force agreed to allow the public to weigh in on plans for the museum, the first of many steps to build the facility in the coming years.

Once erected, the museum will tell stories and show videos of the impact Black pioneers, trailblazers and civil rights activists had on Florida’s history, and possibly the Rosewood massacre in 1923, when the rural Levy County town was once home to a prospering Black community before the white mob wiped it out and killed dozens of African Americans, some eyewitnesses claimed.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law this year to create the nine-member task force to provide suggestions for location, planning, construction, operation and administration for the building.

State Sen. Bobby Powell Jr. from Palm Beach County is a member of the task force but couldn’t be reached for comments.

The survey will be available online through February 2024 and the results will be added in the task force’s report to the Legislature by July 1, 2024.

“Public input is needed in developing recommendations for a future Florida Museum of Black History,” said Florida Secretary of State Cord Byrd in a press release. “I encourage Floridians to take the time to complete and share the short survey and join in the effort to create recommendations that the Department of State will submit to the Florida Legislature.”

During the task force’s meetings in November and December, members sought locations for the museum in the South Florida, North Florida and Central Florida areas.

The group’s chair, Sen. Geraldine Thompson, a Democrat from Orange County, said she’d requested a feasibility study that will include locational, financial, archaeological and genealogical considerations for the museum, among other issues.

She also recommended that the task force tap the Compass Group, which has worked with the Civil Rights Institute in Birmingham, Ala., and the Tubman Museum in Macon, Georgia to determine where the museum would have its best chance at self-sustenance.

The task force’s vision is for the museum to attract thousands of visitors per day and Miami and Orlando, two of the major tourism hubs in the United States, would be the ideal locations for the facility.

Melinda Horton, the executive director of the Florida Association of Museums, recommended that the task force look at cultural hotspots like Miami, Orlando, Tampa and other areas in the state that could ensure the museum thrives.

Orlando offered a bid for the museum near Orlando International Airport, which can draw record travelers to the museum, and Quincy, Florida near Tallahassee, St. Augustine, Florida’s oldest city, and Seminole County which was the home to the first branch of the NAACP also in the running for the museum.

Also submitting bids were the cities of Sarasota, Daytona Beach, Nassau County and Panama City.

The Carter G. Woodson African American Museum of Florida in St. Petersburg also expressed interest as officials are seeking to expand and offered a site for the museum.

But a controversial proposal by the Havana Community Development Corporation (CDC) which is based in Gadsden County at the former site of the first African American high school in Florida, suggested Confederate statues as a part of the museum exhibits.

The non-profit said it envisions the facility to include the history of Black history and the Old South Confederacy with artifacts and documents as part of a scholarly institute.

The proposal was not well received by some members of the task force who compared the two as mixing oil with water.

Thompson said the histories of African Americans and the Old South Confederacy are conflicting tales of racism and achievements by Black pioneers and civil rights leaders.

She said the history of the Old South Confederacy might not be approved by the Legislature since lawmakers voted to remove a statue of Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith from the National Statuary Hall in Washington in 2016.

The state replaced it with a monument to honor Black educator and civil rights activist Mary McCleod Bethune.

For more information about the survey and the Florida Museum of Black History Task Force, visit FLHeritage.com/Black-History Museum.