Republican governor Asa Hutchinson trying for change though Mississippi and Alabama also observe holiday for Martin Luther King and Confederate general

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

In three southern states on Monday, civil rights hero Martin Luther King Jr and civil war Confederate commander General Robert E Lee will share a common holiday. In Arkansas, however, they will do so for perhaps the final time.

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Asa Hutchinson, the state’s Republican governor, is pushing to separate the joint celebration after critics said it is an insult to the man who fought to end racial segregation to share a day with a man who fought to preserve slavery.

“They need to be distinguished and separate,” Hutchinson told a news conference this month about the holidays.

Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama have for years observed a joint holiday for King and Lee, whose birthdays are four days apart.

In the 1940s, Arkansas set up a day in mid-January to honor Lee; it created a holiday for King in 1983. Two years after that it combined the two for a joint day, marked on the third Monday in January.

In January 2015, Arkansas lawmakers defeated a bill that would have reserved the January date for King and established a memorial day, although not a holiday, for Lee in November.

Racial sensitivity has been heightened across the southern US following the murders of nine black worshippers at a Charleston, South Carolina church last June, by a suspected gunman who sympathized with white supremacist views and adorned his social media posts with Confederate regalia.

The shooting caused many southern states to re-examine public symbols of the Confederacy. The Confederate battle flag was subsequently removed from some official locations; statues of Confederate heroes like Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson have also come under scrutiny.

Arkansas state representative Fred Love, a Democrat who led the unsuccessful campaign in 2015 to separate the joint holiday, said passing the new measure would be a winner in terms of race relations.

“It would show how far we’ve come,” he said.

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For many in Arkansas, Lee remains a revered figure who fought with dignity for the south in the civil war, between 1861 and 1865.

Representative Jeff Wardlaw, a Democrat who voted against Love’s bill, said his conservative constituents were concerned Lee would be officially disregarded.

“I’m the kind of guy who does what his constituents tell him they want, and last year they indicated they didn’t want a change,” Wardlaw said.

Hutchinson wants lawmakers to pass legislation that gives King a day of his own when they meet for a regular session in the Republican-dominated statehouse

“It’s important that that day be distinguished and separate and focused on the civil rights struggle and what he personally did in that effort,” Hutchinson said.