Commemorating a racist, as they do
Today, June 1, Alabama state offices are closed. Schools are closed. Courts are closed. The state is observing Jefferson Davis's birthday—one of three holidays Alabama maintains to honor the Confederacy, alongside Robert E. Lee's Birthday in January and Confederate Memorial Day in April.
Davis was the president of a government explicitly founded on the preservation of slavery and white supremacy. He was captured fleeing Richmond, imprisoned for treason, and never tried. Alabama has been giving its employees the day off in his honor ever since.
None of this is news to us.
Also today, Alabama is in the middle of a federal redistricting fight over maps that a three-judge panel has ruled were drawn to intentionally dilute Black voting power. The state filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court within 24 hours of that ruling. The legal deadline fell today. The offices are closed.
The Confederacy lost. Alabama is still working on it. And given the current climate they have the might, if not the right.
We must do what we can, wherever we can.
Non incautus futuri
