Jefferson Davis holiday in Alabama is indefensible and must end

MOBILE, Ala. ⁠— A move is afoot to repeal the law establishing an Alabama state holiday in honor of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Good. The holiday is woefully misguided.

State Rep. Chris England, the chairman of the Alabama Democratic Party, has written to Gov. Kay Ivey to ask her to include the proposed repeal as part of the agenda for a “special session” of the Legislature expected later this summer. England cited a series of Davis’s statements that are highly and justifiably offensive to modern ears, such as that “you cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be.”