It’s time for Texas to abolish Confederate Heroes Day
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Across America, physical monuments to the Confederacy are being challenged and removed — as they should be. But there is a less-talked-about territory that the Confederacy still occupies: state holidays.
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As the expression around here goes, I was yesterday years old when I found out my home state of Texas marks Confederate Heroes Day every Jan. 19. I doubt many other Texans know the public holiday exists. It’s not talked about in schools, thank goodness. Public holidays celebrating Confederates as “heroes” have no place in modern-day America.
But Texas’s Confederate Heroes Day is not some relic of the Civil War, or even Reconstruction. It came to life out of the backlash to Black Texas lawmakers daring to ask for a Black freedom fighter to be honored by the state.
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