Moving Reb holiday makes sense for ‘party of Lincoln’

Texas Republicans have a Lincoln problem.

In a month when the party celebrates the birthdays of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan, the question is why a Republican-dominated Texas Legislature keeps the segregation-era Confederate Heroes Day state employee holiday on Jan. 19 honoring President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Robert E. Lee.

Even Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, called this year for his state to separate the Confederate holiday more from the unified celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the only holiday honoring an American religious leader.

Arkansas celebrated King’s and Lee’s birthdays the same day, while in Texas they are separate holidays but often the same day or week.

Austin ninth-grader Jacob Hale asked the Legislature last year to move and redefine Confederate Heroes Day. He will be back next year, he said Saturday, and is talking with a Republican lawmaker to enlist support.

“I was surprised it didn’t go through,” he said, “since the holiday was passed by Democrats and the Republicans are the party of Lincoln.”

Davis’ June 3 birthday was first celebrated as a Texas holiday 100 years ago, in 1906. In 1931, when African-American voters were still barred from the Democratic primary, the January holiday was added for Lee’s birthday.

Both were combined in 1973, perhaps imitating the 1971 combination of Lincoln’s birthday with the federal George Washington’s Birthday as Presidents Day.

Even the late state Sen. Bob McFarland of Arlington, one of the county’s first elected Republicans in the Reagan Revolution, wanted to replace Confederate Heroes Day with Juneteenth as a holiday better suited to the party’s history and modern political outreach.

Houston Chronicle political blogger Chris Ladd, author of GOPLifer, writes yearly that party leaders should back moving the holiday later in spring away from the King holiday as a “good-faith gesture.”

It would help emphasize congressional Republicans’ role in passing the Civil Rights Act and the party’s history of African-American leaders such as former state Chairman William “Gooseneck Bill” McDonald of Fort Worth.

Lawmakers could debate the best date and definition for the holiday. Davis’ June 3 birthday was Texas’ first Confederate history holiday, but no direct connection. Some other Southern states have holidays that day or the last Monday in April (“Confederate Memorial Day”).

Any spring employee holiday would probably generate more spending and state tax dollars than a January day.

Hale’s idea called for a “Civil War Rembrance Day” in May honoring both the state’s Confederate veterans and Union heroes such as U.S. Army Sgt. Maj. Milton Holland, the state’s first Medal of Honor awardee.

“The idea was to honor everybody and not have the Confederates as good guys and the Union soldiers as traitors,” he said.

But Union veterans are already remembered on Memorial Day.

“I’m not attached to that [proposed] day,” Hale said, “just to moving it away from MLK.”

If Lincoln’s birthday can move and share another date, so can Lee’s.

This story was originally published January 30, 2016 at 7:59 PM with the headline "Moving Reb holiday makes sense for ‘party of Lincoln’."