State offices in Mississippi are closed today to commemorate the men who died fighting the United States government to protect the institution of human slavery. Confederate Memorial Day is a state holiday observed in several southern states.
As in years past, the majority-white, Republican-led Mississippi Legislature once again allowed a Black Democrat’s bill to get rid of Confederate Memorial Day to die without a vote. That lawmaker, Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, wants to replace it with Juneteenth Freedom Day on June 19.
“To honor that cause with a state holiday is to glorify a rebellion against the United States fought to defend the indefensible,” he wrote in an opinion piece for Mississippi Today. “It is an insult to every citizen who believes in equality and freedom, and it is a cruel slap in the face to Black Americans, whose ancestors endured the horrors of slavery and generations of systemic discrimination that followed.”
The holiday comes on the heels of Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves’ decision to once again declare April as Confederate Heritage Month, a proclamation not required by law, but which he issued at the request of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
“That is a state statute, which declares the first Monday in April a state holiday. It is an executive order or resolution that every governor of Mississippi has signed, dating back for many, many, many years, regarding the month of April. And again, it’s driven by that statute that names the last Monday in April a state holiday,” the governor told Nick Judin for the Jackson Free Press in 2020, apparently defending his decision to issue the Confederate Heritage Month proclamation while conflating it with Confederate Memorial Day.
No statute requires governors to declare Confederate Heritage Month—a tradition which former Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice first adopted in 1993 and which one Democrat and three Republican governors after him have continued.
It is not clear when the Mississippi Legislature formally adopted Confederate Memorial Day, but old newspapers show that the State had formally recognized April 26 as Confederate Memorial Day by the first decade of the 1900s.
Elizabeth Rutherford Ellis created the holiday with the first observation in Columbus, Georgia, on April 26, 1866—a date she chose because it marked the first anniversary of the surrender of the Army of Tennessee at Bennett Place in North Carolina, marking the end of major Confederate battle efforts.
In 1970, in response to the federal Uniform Holidays Act, the Mississippi Legislature changed the date of the Confederate Memorial Day observance to the last Monday in April.
Organizations like the Sons of Confederate Veterans have long promoted whitewashed versions of the history of the Civil War, claiming that the war was over “states’ rights” and not slavery. But the historical record leaves no room for doubt.
The Confederacy seceded from and went to war against the United States over the “right” to own Black people as slaves. “Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth,” the Mississippi Declaration of Secession says.
When he unveiled the Confederate Constitution in 1861, Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens wrote that the Confederacy’s “foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man” and “that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.”
When the Mississippi Legislature finally changed the state flag in 2020 to remove the Confederate emblem, it came after Black lawmakers, like Simmons, had spent decades introducing bills to change it without success.
Other bills that lawmakers introduced this year to retire Mississippi’s remnants of the Confederacy also died. In the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., each state is allowed to choose statues of notable residents to represent it in Statuary Hall, but Mississippi is the only state that chose two Confederates to represent it there: Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Confederate Colonel James Zachariah George, both avowed white supremacists and slave owners in Mississippi.
Simmons and Mississippi House Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, both introduced bills to change the statutes, but as in years past, both bills died without receiving a vote in either chamber.
Another failed bill that Mississippi House Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Columbus Democrat, introduced this year would have moved the Robert E. Lee Day holiday, which is currently celebrated on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, to instead coincide with Confederate Memorial Day.
Louisiana ended the practice of celebrating Confederate Memorial Day in 2022.
“It is important for us to realize that there is a way to commemorate history without glorifying the atrocities,” Louisiana Sen. Jay Luneau said at the time.
Correction: An earlier version of this story said that “no statute requires governors to declare Confederate Memorial Day,” but should have said that “no statute requires governors to declare Confederate Heritage Month.” Confederate Memorial Day is mandated under state law. We apologize for the error.
