After pushing for it, Bruce Antone wants Black history museum panel to go away

State Rep. Bruce Antone. Credit: Florida House

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Last year, Rep. Bruce Antone, a Democrat from Orange County, was one of the forces behind creating a task force to advise about what the state’s proposed Black history museum should look like. Now, he doesn’t want the group to submit any recommendations.

The nine members — Antone wasn’t appointed to be one of them — of the Florida Museum of Black History Task Force are supposed to meet for the last time Friday morning to put the final details on a report outlining the planning, construction, operation, and administration of the proposed museum. The group must send that report to Gov. Ron DeSantis and legislative leaders before July 1 — Monday.

In a scathing 23-page letter addressed to the task force, Antone wrote that, since the group didn’t accomplish its tasks, it shouldn’t make any recommendations. The law Antone sponsored requires the task force to outline where the museum would be, what artifacts it would acquire, how it would be marketed, and how it would raise its own revenue.

The Democratic lawmaker wrote in a press release Thursday that “the Florida Museum of Black History Task Force should quietly end and disband tomorrow.”

Antone’s complaints about the process

From the start, Antone has had his heart set on Eatonville, which lies a few miles north of Orlando. But after a hotly contested 5-4 vote during the May 21 meeting, the task force voted to recommend a plot of undeveloped land a few miles outside of downtown St. Augustine as the location for the museum.

Antone insists that his disapproval of the task force’s work isn’t solely that the group didn’t pick Eatonville , one of the first self-governing, all-Black municipalities in the country.

“They could have designed a museum and I could have lived, you know,” Antone told Florida Phoenix in a phone interview “Actually, I did give them a complete design, they just chose not to use it. I gave a whole bunch of recommendations and a document. I had actually designed the museum for Eatonville.”

After he visited the proposed plot in North Florida, Antone said the area is too isolated. His letter accuses task force members of choosing St. Augustine because of personal preferences without considering how the county’s pitch compared to the others.

“St. Augustine is an hour from Jacksonville, an hour from Gainesville, an hour from Daytona, two hours from Orlando. I drove up to the museum site in St Augustine,” Antone said. “I mean, it’s on the westernmost edge of St Augustine. It is rural land. There’s nothing out there. There’s no public transportation out there right now. It is not a good location to be putting what I believe was supposed to be Florida’s world-class black history museum.”

Still, St. Johns County carries historical significance. It was the site of Florida’s first Black settlement in 1738 when the Spanish still colonized the region, and Martin Luther King Jr. once led protests against segregation in St. Augustine.

Delayed meeting

It’s unlikely the group will listen to Antone’s request on the eve of the final meeting. Aside from sponsoring the legislation to establish the task force, he holds no power over the panel.

The group has little time to approve the report because the Florida Division of Historical Resources moved the meeting one week back, from last Friday, with scant notice to the public and the task force members.

Friday morning, task force chair Democratic Sen. Geraldine Thompson of Orange County plans to recommend that all work on the museum stop until the completion of a feasibility study for the top three locations the group chose: St. Johns, Eatonville, and Opa-Locka in Miami-Dade.

“I think we’re shooting in the dark without a feasibility study, and that is going to be something I’m going to stress during our meeting tomorrow,” she said. “The feasibility study should have been done before we started our work, rather than after.”

Feasibility studies are detailed analyses that predict the success of a project and any problems that may arise.

But Antone also criticized that move, saying it would cause additional delays.

“So, it’s probably after the legislative session in 2026 before the results of the feasibility study come back,” he said. “A lot can change in two years. I can leave the Legislature, and so there is no real advocate anymore.”

Appropriations request

Regardless of Friday’s outcome, Antone plans to request $30 million during the next legislative session to build the museum in Eatonville. He pointed out that lawmakers did the same for a Holocaust museum, which got $5 million in the 2024-25 fiscal year budget. Antone’s plan depends on whether Floridians reelect him to the House this year.

Thompson seems to be on board with that idea.

“If he makes an appropriations request, I’d be supportive of that. However, I think the feasibility study is still necessary because, if it goes to Eatonville, what are the plans for marketing and governance? All of that would be covered in a feasibility study, so I don’t know why there’s an objection to a feasibility study.”

In a Republican supermajority state, Antone would need bipartisan support to secure that money.

Task force member Tony Lee, who works with the State University System of Florida, declined to comment. Other members didn’t respond to the Phoenix’s requests for comment.

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