Jacob Hale reached out to lawmakers to make a change.

The halls of the state Capitol are as familiar to Jacob Hale as his school's at St. Stephen's Episcopal School in southwest Austin.

The 17-year-old has been walking around under the dome since he was 13.

"I started in seventh grade," he said.

It's all because he didn't like what he saw on the calendar.

"I saw that we had Confederate Heroes Day in honor of Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and that it was in such close proximity to Martin Luther King Day, and I thought that was ridiculous," he said.

So Hale reached out to lawmakers to make a change. State Rep. Jarvis Johnson filed 1183 this session. It would abolish Confederate Heroes Day.

"He skipped passed the teachers, he skipped passed the locals, and he knew right where to go," the state representative said.

The lawmaker from Houston knows his bill invites controversy.

"It's going to be a fight. I think we're on the right side," he said.

Opponents like Dan Chandler planned to voice their opinions at the House State Affairs Committee on Wednesday.

"He wants to take the holidays; he wants to take the names; he wants to take the crosses; he wants to take the monuments and the 10 commandments," said Chandler.

Representative Johnson told us Jacob also inspired him to do something else.

"Because of Jacob and the works that he did, made me start to do my genealogy ... And I found out that my great-great-grandfather was a slave owner ... But my great-great-grandfather raped my great-great-grandmother, who was a slave, so I'm on both sides," said the state representative.

It was a personal revelation that the representative said helped him understand both sides of this bill even more -- an unintended consequence from a teen whose love of history took to the corridors of the state Capitol.

Hale was also expected to testify at the hearing.