How can we transform symbols of hate into places of hope and learning?

Why this matters

There is a building in Brownsville, in the heart of Pensacola. For a time it was a hub of racism. A hub of hate. Lumon May, a Florida community leader, describes walking upstairs and seeing where the Grand Wizard once sat. Some people wanted to bury it. He made a different choice. In his words, "It was once a building of hate and bigotry. But today, it's a building of life. It's a place of learning. It's a place of hope."

This is the question at the center of the debate over how Florida handles its own history. Some want to erase the hard parts. Others want to reflect on them and teach them. May's answer is the second one. He points to seniors who were once not allowed to walk through Brownsville, and to the fact that they can now walk through freely. Not looking back. Looking forward. But never pretending the past did not happen.

This isn't a fight about one building. It's a fight about whether Florida is a state strong enough to tell the truth about itself. The Jolly campaign frames it plainly: diversity is not a threat. It's a strength. And using it as a source of division is a moral failing.

The approach

David Jolly draws a distinction he returns to often: defending everyone's rights is a legal conversation with the Constitution as its playbook, but celebrating everyone's dignity is a cultural one. The question is whether Florida is a state strong enough to celebrate everyone. Reclaiming a symbol of hate and turning it into a place of learning is exactly that cultural work, done by a community for itself.

One of the most important conversations Jolly cites came from a friend who chaired the African American Studies department at Princeton. The point stuck with him: providing justice and equity for everyone is not a zero-sum game. It doesn't take equity and dignity from anyone to give equity and dignity to someone else. A building reclaimed for learning takes nothing from anyone. It adds.

The campaign also connects this to local control. Jolly has criticized moves out of Tallahassee to tell local communities who they are allowed to celebrate and who they are not, calling it the ultimate preemption. His position is that government closest to the people knows best. A community that wants to turn a place of hate into a place of hope should be free to do so, and a state government should not stand in its way or erase the record it teaches.

This spoke sits under the campaign's broader work on equality and civil rights in Florida, where the full plan on defending rights and celebrating dignity lives. The through-line: Florida spent decades moving toward hospitality for everyone, and the campaign believes it can move that way again.