!!!---HAPPY LEE-JACKSON DAY---!!!

SUMMARY- Virginia started "honoring" Dr.King in 1978 but they "honored" him on New Year's Day when everyone already had the day off and watched football. Then in 1984 they decided that they should honor him with his own day but OH NO we can't give him (read:them) a day of his own so someone pulled two obscure state recognition days (usually a photo on page 3 of the Metro section) out of their collection arses and put them all together to make LEE-JACKSON-KING Day, notice the billing.


Then in 2001 former Governor and former RNC head Jim Gilmore (his affair lead his wife to move out of the Governor's Mansion and in with Patricia Cromwell) split the two. So now today is LEE-JACKSON Day and Monday is Martin Luther King Day.

Are you wearing your GRAY today?

http://www.vascv.org/2004%20Lee%20Jackson%20Announcement.htm

This year’s ceremony commemorating the births of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson will be held on January 16, 2004, beginning at 6 pm in the Old Hall of the House of Delegates in the State Capitol, Richmond, Virginia.

This event is co-sponsored by the Virginia Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the Virginia Division of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59855-2001Jan14?language=printer

Since 1984, despite the evident ironies that once prompted a "Saturday Night Live" parody, Virginia had simultaneously honored the Confederate military heroes and the slain civil rights leader on a combined Lee-Jackson-King Day.

But under a Virginia law that took effect this year, a new state holiday was created for Lee and Jackson. Lee-Jackson Day was marked Friday, leaving the third Monday in January reserved for King's memory alone.

The separation was welcomed by many Virginians beyond the state employees who are getting a four-day holiday weekend.

"For black Virginians, and I am one, it was a slap in the face that Martin Luther King's birthday had to be coupled with the memory of Civil War heroes. To link a day honoring two people who were part of a crusade that was divisive, with a man who was part of a crusade to bring everybody in harmony with the principles of the Republic, was difficult for people like me to understand."

Virginia began naming days after its Confederate heroes in 1889, more than two decades after the Civil War ended, when the legislature established Robert E. Lee Day on his birthday, Jan. 19. Jackson, whose birthday was Jan. 21, was added to Lee's day in 1904.

In 1978, the state decided that King, who was born Jan. 15, would have New Year's Day named in his honor. Then in 1984, two years before Martin Luther King Jr. Day became a national holiday, Virginia legislators stitched the three men's names together on a single day on which they were to be remembered and revered as "defenders of causes."

dammit

January 19th. This year, CHD and MLK Day are both on the 19th. CHD normally is a day that we are open, but only on a skeleton crew. People who work get comp time, people who don't work don't have to use leave.

Just another reason why I tell people I'm from the DC area, not Virginia. :eyes:

I wonder when Arlington, Alexandria and Fairfax are going to secede from Virginia....

As I said in another post, once you hit Woodbridge and points south, you're pretty much in Mississippi.

I had a coworker who hated to travel outside of NoVA because of the looks directed at his Asian wife from local yokels. Scared him.

Gonna be freezing my arse off this weekend at the beach


DDQM

"Mix them up. I am tired of States Rights" was the answer given by General George Thomas when asked if the graves in a military cemetery should be grouped by states. General Thomas---"The Rock of Chickamauga"---was a Virginian who remained loyal to his oath to defend the Constitution and played a big part in crushing the slaveholders' insurrection. I honor his memory, not the mud sill aristocracy of the Old South.

Are well-worth honoring!