Charlottesville drops Thomas Jefferson birthday holiday to instead honor the enslaved
Charlottesville, still healing from the deadly violence of 2017, has decided to end its holiday honoring the
Thomas Jefferson’s birthday will no longer be celebrated as a holiday in the city of Charlottesville in a policy switch.
City council members on Monday voted to replace the official holiday on April 13 with one intended to recognize the emancipation of slaves in a 4 to 1 vote, The Hill reports.
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Councilmember, Kathy Galvin, the only person who voted against the decision believes it is important to still recognize the “contributions” Jefferson made not only in the city, but the country.
“Doing away with Thomas Jefferson’s birthday doesn’t do away with the history,” Galvin argued “That birthday is still here. What he has done in the past is there.”
Jefferson, who was the third President of the United States has long a very prominent reputation in the City of Charlottesville, since he founded the University of Virginia in 1819. He was also one of the primary authors of the U.S. Constitution and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. At the same time he owned more than 600 slaves over his lifetime, fathering at least one child by one of them, Sally Hemmings, DNA testing revealed nearly 200 years later. The controversy surrounding his legacy has ensued ever since.
“Thomas Jefferson already has 365 holidays and I do think that is the case here in Charlottesville,” Council member Dr. Wes Bellamy previously stated, according to local station WHSV. “You literally can’t go anywhere within our city without hearing or seeing a reminder of Thomas Jefferson.”
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In a separate vote, council members decided unanimously that the Jefferson birthday celebration would be replaced by Liberation and Freedom Day will be recognized on March 3. That particular day in 1865 marks U.S. army forces’ arrival to emancipate enslaved African-Americans during the end of the Civil War.
For years, the city of Charlottesville has dealt with many issues regarding tensions surrounding race, culminating in the Unite the Right rally in August 2017.
Many white nationalists gathered in the city to assemble against the possibility of a Confederate statue being removed. They used Jefferson’s statue to a place to express their views and chant hateful words.
Heather Heyer, a counterprotester at the rally, was killed by white nationalist James Alex Fields Jr., who was sentenced to life in prison on June 28 for charging his car into a crowd that killed Heyer.
