04.10.00

By April Duran

Although a recent Saturday Night Live skit parodied the controversial splitting of the state’s Lee-Jackson-King holiday, Virginia residents don’t think it’s a laughing matter.

The General Assembly last month passed a bill that creates a four-day weekend by splitting the holiday that now honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and Thomas H. "Stonewall" Jackson on the third Monday of January.

Under the bill approved at Gov. Jim Gilmore’s request, that day will be just for King, the slain civil rights leader. Lee and Jackson will be commemorated on the preceding Friday. Gilmore signed the bill into law on April 4, the 32nd anniversary of King’s assassination.

"I applaud the Legislature for recognizing the importance of separating the holiday that mark these men’s lives," Gilmore said.

They all "represent contributions to the Commonwealth that are important and unique, and demand separate acknowledgement. There should be no confusion among Virginians in celebrating the lives of these men," he said.

"Virginians are a diverse people. I remain focused on bringing all aspects of our community together to take full advantage of our collective strength."

The Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans opposed the bill.

Robert "Red" Barbour, the group’s commander, said Virginia has observed the birthdays of Lee and Jackson on the third Monday of January since 1896. In the 1980s, when the federal government declared a national observance of King’s birthday on the third Monday of January, the General Assembly combined it with the Lee-Jackson holiday, he said.

Now state employees will get several days off between Dec. 25 and late January: Christmas, New Year’s Day, Lee-Jackson Day and Martin Luther King Day. (They sometimes get off Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve, too.)

"Our feeling is: If you move Lee-Jackson day to Friday – do state employees need a government holiday that close" to so many others? Barbour asked.

But the issue goes beyond time off for public employees. Barbour sees splitting the Lee-Jackson-King holiday as a continuing attack on Confederate heritage in Virginia. His group formed in 1896 to guard the history of Confederate soldiers, according to the organization’s Web page.

Indeed, he commented on the holiday in an interview at Richmond’s City Hall, where he spoke against a proposal to rename two bridges – currently named for Confederate generals – after civil rights leaders.

Despite Barbour’s opposition, the City Council renamed the Jackson Bridge on First Street in honor of civil rights attorney Samuel W. Tucker, and the J.E.B. Stuart Bridge on Fifth Street for community activist Curtis Holt Sr.

Barbour said he is upset by other recent controversies in Richmond, including the graffiti vandalism of the Lee statue on Monument Avenue and the firebombing of the Lee mural on the city’s Floodwall along the James River.

Disputes over holidays, bridges, murals and monuments may seem to be cut from the same cloth as the fight over whether South Carolina should fly a Confederate-looking flag over its Capitol.

But the controversy in Virginia is a lot less volatile than the one in South Carolina, said Edward L. Ayers, a professor of history at the University of Virginia and author of "The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction."

"This is a struggle for space," he said in an interview from California, where he is working as a research fellow for the year. "For over a century, whites controlled space through politics."

He said such battles over public space are fought in various forms. The controversy surrounding holidays for Jackson, Lee and King will fade away over the generations, Ayers predicted.

When the General Assembly years ago combined the state’s Jackson-Lee Day with the federal holiday for King, it was an "act of bad faith to black Virginia," Ayers said. After all, he said, King worked to bring everyone together – while many people see the Confederate cause as an attempt to keep blacks enslaved.

"It’s hard to say the civil rights movement isn’t as important as the Civil War," he said.

Barbour said the separation of the holidays would push the Confederate generals’ observance further away from their actual birthdays. King’s birthday, Jan. 15, 1929, falls before the generals’ birthdays: Lee’s was Jan. 19, 1807, and Jackson’s was Jan. 21, 1824.

Despite such concerns, bills to create the separate holidays passed the Senate 39-0 and the House 94-2.

The Virginia Department of Planning and Budget estimated that creating the holidays would cost the state $900,000. This includes overtime pay for employees of agencies that must operate 24 hours a day like state troopers, correctional officers and mental health care providers.

The bills had bipartisan support. The sponsors included 20 Democrats, like Delegate William Robinson of Norfolk and Sen. Louise Lucas of Portsmouth, and eight Republicans, such as Delegates Terrie Suit of Virginia Beach and Sen. Steve Newman of Lynchburg.

Delegates Frank M. Ruff, R-Mecklenburg, and Harry J. Parrish, R-Manassas, voted against the proposal to make a four-day state holiday.

Ruff said a number of people deserve honoring and they don’t all get state holidays.

"Government employees get more holidays than the private sector, anyway," Ruff said. He noted that the past two Christmas holidays were extended by an extra day off by the governor.

Ruff originally supported observing King’s holiday on a Sunday, saying that would be more appropriate for honoring a minister.

He described a particular tribute paid to King in a Sunday church service when a 5- or 6-year-old girl recited the entire "I Have a Dream" speech by heart. "It was a stirring rendition," Ruff said. "Those people (at that church service) wouldn’t have been there to hear it" if it hadn’t been held on a Sunday.

Since the federal government made the King holiday on the third Monday of January, Ruff said the state should acquiesce. He now recommends celebrating the Confederate generals on Sunday.

"Families have more time to honor someone on a Sunday," Ruff said.

Barbour has different reasons for opposing the holiday change. He said it’s one in a series of attacks by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to undermine Confederate history.

He noted that the NAACP opposes Confederate History Month, which Virginia governors have designated each April, because the Civil War began in April 1861 and ended in April 1865.

Several phone calls to the NAACP’s Virginia State Conference were never returned.

Gov. George Allen made Confederate History Month one of his first proclamations in April 1994 and wrote the original resolution, Barbour said.

In contrast, Gilmore at first reduced it from a proclamation to recognition and noted the suffering of African Americans during slavery. Just last week he made it a proclamation again. Barbour believes Gilmore, a Republican, may be pandering to black votes, which is a mistake, he said, since most African Americans historically vote Democratic.

Some localities like Chesterfield County, in suburban Richmond, want to emphasize the state’s recognition of Confederate history. The county’s Board of Supervisors recently passed a resolution designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month in Chesterfield.

Because of the board’s action, African American leaders recently called for a boycott of two Chesterfield malls. In response, David Duke, the former head of the Ku Klux Klan, visited one of the malls, Chesterfield Towne Center, to thank white shoppers for ignoring the boycott.