AUSTIN, Texas (AP) – Texas is among just nine states with holidays honoring Confederate soldiers and a teenager is behind a renewed push to change that.
The effort to abolish “Confederate Heroes Day” comes months after state Republican leaders yielded to pressure and removed a 60-year-old plaque that rejected slavery as an underlying cause of the Civil War.
A lobbying firm based in Washington, D.C., is working pro bono on behalf of a Texas 17-year-old who has been trying to change the holiday since he was 13. Jacob Hale says it’s important to remember the past in an accurate and truthful way.
The Texas holiday began in 1973 and honors Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and other Confederate figures. A bill that would abolish the holiday is unlikely to prevail in the GOP-controlled Legislature.
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