‘TIME TO MOVE ON’

Virginia Ends State Holiday Honoring Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson

The state legislature has proposed replacing Lee-Jackson Day with Election Day.

Virginia’s House voted this week to remove Lee-Jackson Day from the state’s list of holidays, moving one step further to scrubbing Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas ‘Stonewall’ Jackson from the state’s history. The House will vote on a bill to replace the holiday with Election Day on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Gov. Ralph Northman made the measure one of his 2020 legislative proposals. “It commemorates a lost cause. It’s time to move on,” he said in a speech last month. Lee and Jackson owned slaves and fought to maintain slavery in the U.S. The city of Charlottesville covered up statues of the pair after the violent 2017 white nationalist rally but a judge later ruled the statues were “war monuments” that couldn’t be removed without state permission.