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From: rkoch@banmlkday.com

Every state celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but not every
state celebrates it the same way. In New Hampshire, King�s
birthday is �Martin Luther King Jr. Civil Rights Day,� an
explicit celebration of the entire civil rights movement (and a
compromise with lawmakers who didn�t want a day devoted to King
alone). In Idaho, it�s �Martin Luther King, Jr.�Idaho Human
Rights Day,� a celebration of justice writ large. And in three
states�Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi�MLK Day is also Robert
E. Lee Day.

This isn�t a different Robert E. Lee�some forgotten crusader for
human equality. No, this is the Gen. Robert E. Lee who led
Confederate armies in war against the United States, who
defended a nation built on the �great truth� that the �negro is
not equal to the white man,� and whose armies kidnapped and sold
free black Americans whenever they had the opportunity.

Despite his betrayal of the Union (a stark contrast to fellow
Virginian Winfield Scott, who refused to join the Confederacy)
and his treatment of enslaved black Americans�as a slavedriver,
he sold children and oversaw brutal punishments, including
sewing brine into the wounds of returned fugitives�Lee�s popular
image is of an honorable and decent man who fought well and
loathed slavery. (The former is debatable and the latter is
true, in that Lee thought slaveholding a burdensome occupation.)

There are three other states that commemorate the life of Lee:
Georgia, Florida, and Virginia. The difference is that their
celebrations are all separate from MLK Day, if only by a few
days: Virginia�s Robert E. Lee Day was this past Friday.

In fairness, Lee Day isn�t a recent invention. The general�s
birthday falls on Jan. 19, and the first official commemoration
was marked by the Virginia legislature in 1889, a decade after
the end of Reconstruction and well into the period of racial
regression, when Southern state legislatures dismantled efforts
at biracial education, imposed Jim Crow, and turned a blind eye
to anti-black terrorism. And in 1904, Robert E. Lee Day became
�Lee-Jackson Day� after Virginia added Confederate Gen. Thomas
�Stonewall� Jackson to the holiday.

All of this raises an obvious question: How did Lee get tangled
up in our national commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr. and
the civil rights movement? The best answer is convenience. In
states that commemorated Lee, lawmakers who approved of MLK Day
didn�t want to create two holidays in January. Instead, they
combined the two days. As a concept, it was a poor pairing. As a
bureaucratic solution, it worked.

But over the next two decades, under pressure from civil rights
groups, several states would either end their Lee commemorations
or move them to a different day. In 2000, pushed by Republican
Gov. Jim Gilmore, Virginia would end the state�s �Lee-Jackson-
King Day� and reserve the third Monday of January for the civil
rights leader.

It should be said that the �Lee� part of �Lee-King Day� is
mostly downplayed in states that have the holiday. Outside of a
few towns and counties, there aren�t any public events in honor
of Lee�s memory. The general, a symbol of the white South�or at
least, a version of it�exists in quiet tension with King, a
symbol of a more modern, integrated South. Still, it�s not hard
to find some commemoration of Lee, who continues to capture
Southern imaginations. �If the image of Lee changes in history,
the man himself did not, even in the face of the greatest
provocations,� writes Paul Greenberg for the Arkansas-Democrat
Gazette in its annual editorial on the life of Lee, �His
victories were great, but his honor greater.�

As a Virginian, I understand the drive to praise Lee. His honor
is an undeniable and worthy quality. But we shouldn�t forget
what Lee fought for. Not for freedom or for liberty, but for
perpetual bondage and a South that forever held its black
citizens as slaves and servants. And while Lee spent the post-
war period as an advocate for reconciliation, he also opposed
the nascent moves toward racial egalitarianism, condemning black
suffrage, even as many black leaders favored voting rights for
former Confederates and the education for their children.


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