In Connecticut, the change occurred swiftly after the arrival this summer of a new Democratic chairman, Nick Balletto, who is closely aligned with the state chapter of the NAACP. The NAACP had previously helped to draw attention to buildings at Yale that were named after slave owners, along with the role that Aetna, the Hartford-based insurance giant, had played insuring the slave industry. When South Carolina moved to remove the Confederate flag from its Capitol grounds weeks after the racially-motivated massacre of nine African Americans in a Charleston church, the debate in Connecticut “resurfaced,” said Scot X. Esdaile, president of the state NAACP.

“If the Republican Party is going to be challenged on the Confederate flag, then the Democratic Party needs to be challenged on their issues, too,” Esdaile said in a phone interview, noting that while the NAACP has recently been much more closely allied with Democrats, it is a nonpartisan organization. “If you really delve into the history of the Democratic Party, they have a really cloudy and bloody past.”

Democrats, Esdaile said, “can’t be judged on what happened in the past, but they can be judged on what they have done today. And I think they did the right thing.”

Balletto put forward the proposal in a resolution stating that it was “only fitting” that the name of the state party’s “most visible annual event reflects our dedication to diversity and forward-looking vision.” (The event was known as the Jefferson-Jackson-Bailey Dinner, with the latter name honoring John Bailey, a New Deal-era liberal who headed the state party and died in 1975.) Governor Dannel Malloy quickly endorsed the resolution, writing in a letter to committee members that the dinner’s name should reflect the Democratic “commitment to justice and equality.”

This is by no means an indictment of the legacy of Thomas Jefferson or any of our nation’s founders. Yet as a party we should continue to look at ourselves in the mirror and ensure that we strive to represent the ideals that we talk about every day in Connecticut. This is an opportunity to pay homage to the progressive leaders and policies that have defined our party for the past several decades.

Facing no serious opposition, the change was approved on July 22, and the names of Jefferson and Jackson were dropped from the dinner’s name for the first time in 67 years. The party is now accepting suggestions for a new name, which it will consider in the fall.

The vice president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in Monticello is, incredibly, a British-born historian named Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy. “The Jackson is basically my mother’s maiden name, but I also use it as something of a joke,” he told me by phone.

O’Shaughnessy told me it was “inevitable and appropriate that historians adopted a more critical perspective towards Thomas Jefferson, but it is possible to appreciate his contribution to the advancement of democracy while acknowledging his involvement in slavery, which he himself denounced as an ‘abominable crime.’” And the modern Democratic Party, he said, understandably wants “to embrace a much larger audience.”