Arkansas bill to drop Robert E. Lee holiday goes to governor for signature

http://www.swtimes.com/news/20170318/arkansas-king-lee-bill-sent-to-governor

The bill if signed, and Governor Asa Hutchison is planning on signing it Monday in a ceremony, will remove Robert E. Lee from the state's Jan. 19th holiday which will be for Martin Luther King.

As the article points out that leaves only Alabama, Mississippi having a Robert E. Lee/ Martin Luther King holiday combined.

As the article points out there used to be seven states with Lee/King combined holidays.

Some Republicans in the state legislature came up with various excuses to not change the holiday without endorsing the Confederacy. This has been a strategy of late to defend the glorification of the Confederacy by having rationalizations that don't specifically defend the Confederacy but find some reason or another for the Confederate monument to stay, the Confederate holiday to be retained, and the street or building named after a Confederate not to be renamed.

I am sort of surprised that this has happened. It could be that with the massacre in 2015 some state legislators wanted to do something to further de-Confederate their state.

It might be though that the Lee holiday  came up in trying to attract a factory, facility, or business headquarters to Arkansas. Some competing site just needs to point out that they have a Confederate holiday and it would give pause to families wondering what type of state to which they would be moving. Competing sites probably would like to bring a place's Confederate identity to attention as a means of blocking the other sites chances of locating a corporate facility.

I don't think a corporation's non-discrimination policy is worth much if they don't consider the issue of the Confederate self-identification of a place to which they wish to locate a facility.

I think at some point I should ask corporations to consider this and give it some weight.