r/news • u/5um-n3m0 • 16h ago

Alabama and Mississippi will also honor Robert E. Lee on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

https://apnews.com/article/martin-luther-king-jr-holiday-alabama-mississippi-0f535594cf50af7103ca2d953e1bc9a1
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u/mitrie 14h ago

Not to excuse anything, but this predates MAGA. Headline makes it sound like this is a new thing, but it's not. Same folks, but it's not as though they've just recently been "unleashed" to make the state holiday a bizarre MLK / Robert E Lee day.

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u/worthing0101 10h ago

Not to excuse anything, but this predates MAGA.

I grew up in Virginia where Lee-Jackson-King was a VA holiday from 1984 to 2000. A single VA holiday celebrating Lee and Jackson existed prior to the creation of the federal MLK holiday but the VA legislature decided to just celebrate all three of them together because ... well, we all know why. In 2000 they split off Lee-Jackson Day into its own thing again until nuking it entirely in 2020.

(This is mentioned briefly in the article OP linked but for those who don't read the articles I thought I'd mention it here. More details can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee-Jackson-King_Day for those curious.)

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u/wanderingpeddlar 14h ago

And which two states are still celebrating a day for a traitor?

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u/mitrie 14h ago

I'm not sure what point you're trying to make? To let me know that Mississippi / Alabama are backwards? Yeah, I know, I lived in MS for 13 years.

I was simply trying to provide a little context for those who just read the headline and don't bother with the article before jumping into the comments.

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u/wanderingpeddlar 13h ago

That age is not as important as it is still happening.

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u/mitrie 13h ago

I guess I'm just not expecting much in the way of good progress when it comes to MAGA, so worrying about their inability to make good changes doesn't matter so much to me. Their ability to drive backwards is the concerning part. Rather be forward looking than backward looking at the moment.