Government offices close as three Southern states memorialize Confederacy

(CN) — Don’t bother with your driver’s license renewal in Diamondhead on April 29, or your tax inquiry in Tupelo. State offices across Mississippi will be closed on Monday as the Magnolia State observes Confederate Memorial Day.

Mississippi isn’t alone. Alabama and South Carolina also recognize Confederate Memorial Day, closing state offices on April 22 and May 10, respectively.

Other Southern states, including Florida, North Carolina and Georgia, still enshrine the holiday in state law but no longer close state offices in observance. That puts these states in stark contrast to much of the country, where there’s been a major reassessment of the Confederacy’s legacy in recent years.

A lot has changed in the United States since June 17, 2015, when a white supremacist with an interest in provoking racial conflict walked into historically Black Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, and murdered nine parishioners. Citing the perpetrator’s embrace of segregation and Confederate symbolism, then-South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley almost immediately ordered the Confederate battle flag removed from the statehouse grounds. 

In the wake of those killings, other states and cities also took steps to remove Confederate monuments and memorials. Calls to do so only intensified after other incidents of racial violence, including the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, West Virginia, in 2017 and the killing of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in 2020.

Headquartered in Alabama, the Southern Poverty Law Center maintains a database of Confederate monuments and memorials. According to the group, as many as 10% of the nation’s Civil War monuments and memorials have been removed or relocated from public spaces in recent years. Still, more than 2,000 remain. 

Most of these monuments and memorials came long after the fall of the Confederacy. In a related 2022 report, the Southern Poverty Law Center notes that many date not from the aftermath of the Civil War but from the era of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Act. In fact, it wasn’t until nearly three decades after the Civil War that Mississippi adopted a state flag featuring the Confederate battle flag. 

Unlike Memorial Day, which is observed nationwide on the last Monday in May, Confederate Memorial Day is observed on different days because it is rooted in local traditions, according to Caroline Janney, a professor of history at the University of Virginia who has published books on the legacy of the Civil War. 

It was Confederate wives and widows who first established organizations and events memorializing the war, Janney said. Individual states did not establish dates for Confederate Memorial Day until sometime after 1868, when Memorial Day was established by the federal government. 

Some Southern states observe Robert E. Lee Day on the same day as Martin Luther King Jr. Day, choosing to honor a Confederate general alongside the civil-rights icon. Alabama also observes Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ birthday, closing offices on the first Monday in June. It’s the only Southern state with three holidays celebrating the Confederacy. 

When discussing the ongoing and historical debates around Confederate symbolism, Janney uses the term “Civil War memory.” It’s a phrase that captures what the Civil War generation and their descendants choose to remember about the war — and what they’d rather forget. 

The backlash against Confederate imagery is not recent, Janney added. When Atlanta was chosen as the site of the 1996 Summer Olympics, for example, some residents and visitors questioned the ethics of the Georgia state flag, which prominently featured the Confederate battle flag. Georgia voters approved a new state flag in 2003, dropping the Confederate symbolism. 

In recent years, as Americans have acknowledged that slavery was the primary motivator of Southern secession, Confederate imagery has also been impacted “by the way in which the past has been leveraged for contemporary political issues,” Janney said. With increasing collective awareness of racial inequality and social justice, she thinks monuments and memorials to the Confederacy are almost destined to fall. 

“It's a reckoning with the past,” Janney said in a phone interview. “People who use those symbols know exactly what they mean today. You can't wave a Confederate flag and deny that it has white-supremacist connotations and meanings.”

Carl Jones disagrees. A U.S. Marine Corps veteran who runs a small firearms-training business near Cullman, Alabama, Jones has also served in the Alabama Division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization that maintains several Confederate monuments and memorials around the state. 

In an interview, Jones acknowledged that slavery was a cause of secession but contends that tariffs and other factors as the primary cause of secession. Confederate symbols like the battle flag represent essentially the same ideals as the American flag, Jones argued.

“The question should be not why the South seceded, but why the North invaded,” he said in a recent phone interview. “I don't think the assaults on Confederate history are Confederate-centric — I think they are American.”

Jones suggested there’s been a larger pushback against American history in general, noting monuments to founding fathers and other individuals have been targeted.

“We are not a hate organization, and the Confederate battle flag is not a symbol of hate,” Jones said. “If a group of other people wanted to tear down a civil rights monument, we would stand to protect that monument too. I don't want any historical monuments torn down. It’s part of our history — an ugly part, sure — but why deny future generations the opportunity to learn from those things?”

But as the gap between the Civil War and the present day widens, it seems that fewer and fewer other Southerners agree with Jones.

In all three states that still celebrate Celebrate Memorial Day, there have been efforts to repeal it — though those efforts have so far been unsuccessful. A 2022 attempt in South Carolina to replace Confederate Memorial Day with Juneteenth failed, as did a 2023 measure in Alabama that would have also established a state holiday honoring Rosa Parks. That Democrat-sponsored measure never made it out of committee, but opponents aren’t giving up. Just this year in Mississippi, state Representative Kabir Karriem, also a Democrat, pledged to make MLK Day a standalone holiday. (Like in Alabama, that bill died in committee.) 

Even still, there are signs of change across the former Confederacy. Mississippi adopted a new flag design without Confederate symbolism in 2021, following public pressure and a statewide referendum.

Janney noted that Virginia — arguably the heart of the Confederacy and the site of two of its four former capitals — has perhaps been particularly aggressive about abandoning the use or display Confederate symbolism. The state ditched its annual recognition of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson in 2021, and local governments were swift to approve the removal of prominent monuments from public spaces in Richmond, Lexington, Williamsburg and Charlottesville. Virginia never had Confederate imagery on its state flag. 

Janney, who lives in Virginia, said she was perplexed why some states still celebrate Confederate Memorial Day. “Things have changed dramatically,” she said. “The fact that some states still have a Confederate Memorial Day is surprising to me, given the contemporary context.”

Follow @gabetynes

Subscribe to Closing Arguments

Sign up for new weekly newsletter Closing Arguments to get the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and hot cases and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world.

Email *

Submit