Maybe it's like celebrating Hermann Göring day in Germany. Oh that's right. That would be in bad taste but Germany has the common sense not to celebrate a failed military leader that worked for a morally wrong cause. How in the world could anyone celebrate someone who fought to defend such a despicable cause? It's in especially bad taste to celebrate Lee on the day that should be for Martin Luther King, Jr. who was a great American.
Arkansas state employees will have Monday off, in honor of Martin Luther King Jr . – and General Robert E. Lee, commanding officer of the Confederate Army.Nostalgia, really? What part of the Old South was so glorious? The slavery or the racism that required changes in the federal law in the 1960s? Oddly enough, I can't recall any northerner suggesting a Ulysses S. Grant day to celebrate the man who won the war for the North while trampling over Richmond, Atlanta and the south.
Every year, the doors of the state Capitol bear notices that offices will be closed the third Monday of January to honor Dr. King and Gen. Lee. Arkansas is one of three states to commemorate both men with a state holiday. The others are Alabama and Mississippi.
"I know my students that come to the university seem to come with a bit of nostalgia for the Old South ... particularly Robert E. Lee, who has the mystique of being the man who only reluctantly seceded," said University of Arkansas history professor Jeannie M. Whayne. "He's become, well, one book's title says it all, The Marble Man, the ideal of the Southerner."
