ASU Professors Discuss Confederate Memorial Holiday
The Confederate Memorial Day holiday honors the soldiers who died fighting in the Civil War.
But it is also known for impact the war had on slavery.
On Monday, the holiday was the topic of discussion at an Alabama State University teach-in. .
The discussion was put on by ASU’s Department of History and Political Science.
Topics included the 1981 lynching of African-American teenager Michael Donald in Mobile and the 1919 Red Summer riots that resulted in hundreds of casualties.
People we spoke with say the holiday means different things to different people. They say it’s important to put down aside those differences and work together to solve the problems that still have an impact in our world today.
“It’s important to understand the how Confederate Memorial Day is tied to slavery, and how its tied to Jim Crow, and segregation,” Dr. Marta Holliday says
“We have to join hands together, we have to go to church together, we have to visit each others homes, we have to listen to those people who are confederate believers and point out to them that well, we got a lot more things in common on other grounds than just the confederacy,” founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center Morris Dees says.
Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi are the only states that recognize Confederate Memorial Day as an official holiday.
