Mississippi And Alabama Still Celebrate Confederate General Robert E. Lee Alongside MLK Day. Why?

Robert E. Lee Day was originally celebrated by states in the South for decades following the Civil War, but was abandoned by most after President Ronald Reagan designated the third Monday in January MLK Day.

Mississippi and Alabama are the only two states that still celebrate Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s birthday alongside the federal holiday set aside for slain Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Every other state that formerly celebrated Lee, including Lee’s home state of Virginia, has dropped those recognitions.

According to the Mississippi Clarion Ledger, there have been several attempts to separate the holidays in Mississippi, but they failed in 2023 and 2024.

Mississippi State Rep. Kabir Karriem (D-Columbus) submitted another bill to separate the celebrations on King’s birthday, Jan. 15.

In 2018, after he initially introduced the bill, Karriem gave a statement to the Columbus Commercial Dispatch indicating his belief that the two men’s celebrations needed to be divided.

“Both men had impacts on our history, and I think it’s time to separate the holiday so that King can be observed for the Cvil Rights icon he is,” Karriem said. “I think this change is long overdue.”

According to the bill, it proposes a Mississippi state holiday to “exclusively recognize Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday on the third Monday of January.”

According to WBHM, Robert E. Lee Day was originally celebrated by Southern states in the years and decades following the Civil War, but eventually was abandoned by most after President Ronald Reagan designated the third Monday in January a federal holiday in 1983 to be Martin Luther King Day, a commemoration of King’s birthday on Jan. 15.

However, Alabama’s efforts to separate the commemoration of Robert E. Lee from that of King has met the same fate as Rep. Karriem’s bill in Mississippi.

Despite bipartisan support of a Senate bill that proposed to move the date of Alabama’s Lee Day commemoration to the date of his death, Oct. 12, the bill, sponsored by Sen. Vivian Figures in 2020, died before it could make it out of committee.

In 2023, a House Bill, House Bill 360, that was filed by Rep. Chris England (D-Tuscaloosa) which would have eliminated Lee’s holiday from the calendar completely, died after it was introduced for a vote by Democrat Kenyatté Hassell on April 20.

Unlike the other two Gulf Coast states, Louisiana was able to decouple the two diametrically opposed holidays in 2020 after Louisiana state legislators removed both Lee Day and Confederate Memorial Day from its roster of holidays.

State Sen. Jay Luneau (D-Alexandria) referred to the signing of the bill that eliminated the two holidays as “an important step in the right direction” and proof that Louisiana stands “ready to do the right thing,” as it relates to reckoning with its history of racism.

It appears, if things hold to their current patterns, that neither Alabama nor Mississippi are ready to make that particular conciliatory gesture as it relates to their history with racism, which is quite literally soaked with blood.