A statewide task force continues to deliberate on the location of Florida’s future Black History Museum, after two finalists came neck in neck in the final rankings.
St. John’s County and Eatonville/Orange County came within 1.45 points of one another on the final ranking of the candidates for the site of the museum.
Chair of the Black History Museum task force Senator Geraldine Thompson called on members to reconsider the rankings based on the results of thousands of public surveys they collected asking Floridians where they’d like their museum to be.
“And we got over 4,000 responses to the survey. And I asked them to quantify the responses as it relates to the location. And there were over 500 responses that mentioned Orange County or Orlando, in particular, which was more than any other location,” Thompson said.
Thompson said the public’s opinion should weigh just as heavily as any task force member's or stakeholder's.
“And so at the end of the meeting, I stressed that we needed to take into consideration the responses from the public. I mean, you ask people for their opinions, so you ought to give it some weight. And so I think that that's also going to be a matter of discussion at the main meeting,” Thompson said.
The task force will meet in May to discuss the results of these public surveys, as well as the results of an architectural survey before making their final call.
For now, it’s St. John’s in first place, Eatonville/Orange County in second place, Opa-Locka in third place, and Sarasota in fourth place.
Watch the full meeting of the task force here.
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