This article was written today by Laura Vozzella regarding descendants
of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. These men made an
appearance last Monday in the Virginia Senate to show their support for Lt.
Gov. Fairfax, who days earlier opted
out of a Republican senator’s ode
to Robert E. Lee.
The men have opposed all tributes to their Confederate
ancestors since 2017, when the proposed disposition of Lee’s statue in
Charlottesville became the rallying cry for a white-supremacist rally that
turned violent.
Fairfax,
an African-American and lieutenant governor to Virginia invited Lee and Christian
to the Senate session today (Martin Luther King Jr. Day).
“As a Robert Lee, I want to be a different footnote in
history,” Lee said in an interview. “And I want to stand with Justin Fairfax
. . . and say that honoring the racist, white-supremacist past that we hold with
statues, with mentions . . . on the floor of the commonwealth’s legislature is
a no-go for me and a no-go for so many people of goodwill in the South.”
This article quite obviously relates to history as it
involves the close descendants to the two most infamous Confederate leaders. Tributes
to such leaders have become more politically fraught in recent years amid many
social and political tensions. Thankfully we are slowly being shown small peeks
of how humanity can come together despite the many years where we have only
been able to see dark, immoral human inclinations.
Despite being descendants of them, it's very humble of them to denounce homage to these racist leaders and people should take their words to heart.
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