Has Arkansas changed enough since the 1980s that its residents will seize the opportunity to end the nonsense of commemorating Robert E. Lee and Martin Luther King Jr. on the same day?
Gov. Asa Hutchinson must believe they have. Last week, the Republican chief executive said he wants lawmakers in 2017 to separate state holidays to honor the Confederate leader and the epitomical advocate for political, social and economic equality for all people.
What’s the point?
Arkansas should end its dual commemoration of Gen. Robert E. Lee and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Arkansas has formally celebrated Lee's birthday since 1947, four years before King even graduated from seminary. But the movement for civil rights was already at work in Arkansas. It takes little imagination to look inside the minds of lawmakers 82 years after Appomattox Courthouse to see what kind of message they wanted to send in commemorating Lee.
Is it wrong to celebrate Lee? Some will say yes, convinced his leadership of men fighting for the Confederacy and its values -- including slavery -- should be viewed with shame. But Lee was a great leader of men, a man of honor and dedication to his state. States meant far more to people back then, before the progression -- if that's the right word -- into an all-encompassing federal government
Lee's beloved Virginia split its shared holiday back in 2000, recognizing Lee along with fellow Confederate leader Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson on the Friday before the Monday observance in honor of King. If Lee's own state can pull off separate holidays without abandoning the heritage of its people, why not Arkansas?
Splitting recognition of two honorable men whose historic contributions to the South are starkly different makes perfect sense, unless one is devoted to a treatment that promotes racial tension over racial reconciliation. Back in the 1980s when commemoration of King became a federal holiday, some states' leaders backed a combined holiday out of convenience -- not wanting to create two holidays so close together in January. As Slate political correspondent Jamelle Bouie recently noted, "As a concept, it was a poor pairing. As a bureaucratic solution, it worked."
But it's a marriage of convenience that cannot survive. Southerners are not blinded to the honorable character of Gen. Lee, but they are slowly realizing to celebrate him on the third Monday of January each year is to degrade the vital message of equality behind the day's other honoree. No state can honor Martin Luther King Jr. by placing him on the same stage as the general who led the fight to preserve a horrid institution that, had it survived, would have placed King in shackles.
We appreciate Gov. Hutchinson's leadership and his recognition it's time to make this change.
Commentary on 01/16/2016