Story at a glance
- A new bill would remove Lee-Jackson day, which celebrates two Virginian Confederate generals, as a state holiday.
- The bill would also add Election Day as a state holiday.
- A newly Democratic-led legislature will consider the bill when they begin the 2020 session in January.
A Virginia lawmaker is proposing a bill for the second year in a row that would end the observance of Lee-Jackson Day as a state holiday while designating Election Day, the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, as a holiday.
Joseph C. Lindsey, a Democrat who represents a portion of the Norfolk, Va., area, introduced a similar bill last January that died in a privileges and elections subcommittee on a vote that fell along party lines.
Lee-Jackson Day, observed on the Friday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, is an official state holiday in Virginia that celebrates Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson as “defenders of causes.” The two Virginians served as Confederate generals in the Civil War, and their names can be found all over the state on highways, parks, buildings and other landmarks.
The bill would also designate the Tuesday after the first Monday of November as Election Day, for “the right of citizens of a free society to exercise the right to vote.” While Election Day was initially set considering the harvest schedule and travel limitations of the time, critics have long argued that the designation of a weekday impedes many working voters from participating.
The bill will be considered when the Virginia legislature begins the 2020 session on Jan. 8 and faces better odds than last year. Lindsey is now the chair of the House privileges and elections committee, the first black lawmaker to hold that position, according to reporting by the Virginian-Pilot. Democrats also took control of both the House and Senate in the state legislature this November for the first time in more than two decades.
Confederate monuments and memorials around the country are increasingly being questioned and removed. Many cities and counties in Virginia already do not observe Lee-Jackson day, the Virginian-Pilot reports, seeing it as a celebration of a slave-holding history that is painful for black Virginians.
Copyright 2023 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
