Washington Post: Two states still observe King-Lee Day, honoring Robert E. Lee with MLK
Alabama and Mississippi jointly celebrate the civil rights hero and the Confederate general
Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. (left) and Confederate general Robert E. Lee are still celebrated jointly in Alabama and Mississippi. (AFP/Getty Images (King); Matthew B. Brady/AP (Lee))
By Meena Venkataramanan — January 16, 2023
As the country celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday, two states will observe a different holiday: King-Lee Day, which commemorates both King and Confederate general Robert E. Lee.
The two men’s birthdays fall just four days apart, but their legacies couldn’t be more different. King gave his life to the cause of racial equality; Lee fought in the Civil War to keep Black people enslaved.
Nonetheless, Mississippi and Alabama will both mark King-Lee Day as a state holiday. Until recently, they had company: Arkansas celebrated King-Lee Day until 2018, and Virginia observed Lee-Jackson-King Day, also honoring Confederate general Stonewall Jackson, until 2000. (Virginia subsequently observed a separate Lee-Jackson Day the Friday before MLK Day until 2021.) Texas still celebrates Confederate Heroes Day on Lee’s actual birthday, Jan. 19, and its state employees can take a paid holiday on both days. . . .
In Alabama and Mississippi, Lee and King are “seen as representing the very best in terms of Southern values, the Southern way of life, and Southern heritage,” said Lewis V. Baldwin, a professor emeritus of religious studies at Vanderbilt University, who has written seven books on King.
. Baldwin participated in the civil rights movement as a high school student in Camden, Ala., where he heard King speak. “The fact that both [King and Lee] are celebrated on the same day speaks to what I call an ambivalent South, a South that says one thing and actually practices another,” he said. . . .
Some elected officials in Alabama have advocated for celebrating only King, but their efforts have been unsuccessful. A bill to end the recognition of Lee on MLK Day did not receive a committee hearing last year.
“Alabama has a history of running from uncomfortable conversations unless they fit a particular narrative,” said state Rep. Chris England (D), who spearheaded the legislation. “So maybe we weren’t in the mood to have an uncomfortable conversation last session. But I plan on, and other legislators plan on, giving Alabama the opportunity to have that discussion again.”
England’s efforts earned support from Rep. Terri A. Sewell, the lone Democrat in Alabama’s U.S. congressional delegation. Sewell, who said she grew up “literally a stone’s throw from the Edmund Pettus Bridge” in Selma, the site of the Bloody Sunday beatings of civil rights marchers in 1965 and a subsequent march led by King, finds the joint celebration of King and Lee “unconscionable,” she said.
Alabama observes two other holidays dedicated to Confederate leaders: Confederate Memorial Day in April, and Confederacy president Jefferson Davis’s birthday in June. Sewell believes all three state holidays devoted to the celebration of Confederate leaders should be “rescinded.”
“I’m not saying that we should rewrite history,” she said. “I’m just saying that we should not celebrate folks … whose legacy it was to continue the suppression of African Americans and Black Alabamians.” . . .
Idaho combines MLK Day with an all-encompassing Idaho Human Rights Day — which some view as a devaluation of King’s contributions to the civil rights movement.
. . . Clayborne Carson, the Martin Luther King, Jr. centennial professor emeritus of history at Stanford University . . .pointed out there is already a global Human Rights Day celebrated on Dec. 10. “I would have to make a judgment about the motives of some of the people who insisted that these two holidays be celebrated together,” said Carson, who participated in the 1963 March on Washington where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. “My guess is that [Idaho Human Rights Day] was meant to provide an outlet for people who aren’t in favor of the King holiday but would accept it if it were combined with something else.”
The offices of the Republican governors of Alabama, Mississippi and Idaho did not respond to requests for comment.
As is now the typical left rewrite of history – the woke prefer to ‘forget’ that Lee went with Virginia out of the Union, because most people saw their State as first before the Union.
No greater show was done by Grant to Lee and the defeated South at Appomattox Court House than tell his soldiers to treat both as fellow members of the same nation. I had an ancestral Uncle present at the surrender.
Perhaps, the woke might consider having some measure of the same virtue shown by Grant… Perhaps, the woke might consider the violence in their minds. Perhaps, the woke holy ones are now the actual problem with their endless demand for a revolution.
The woke are tearing the country apart by this type of thinking, and similar mindsets. Are the woke ready for the blood? Probably not. These types are good at yelling and think someone else will do the dying for their notions.