On Monday, Jan. 19, Americans honor the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,, a civil rights icon who devoted his life to ending racism and segregation through nonviolence before he was ultimately assassinated.
On the same day, Florida also recognizes the birthday of General Robert E. Lee, who led armies in battle against the United States of America to maintain the Confederate States of America and their right to continue enslaving Black people.
It wasn’t an intentional conflation of a civil rights leader and a Civil War leader, just an inevitable turn of the calendar.
Lee’s birthday is one of three Confederate holidays still on the books for Florida after well over a century, despite numerous attempts to remove them.
Florida also made Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a state holiday in 1978, the 11th state to do so, six years before President Ronald Reagan made MLK Day a federal holiday in 1983.
Here’s what to know.
Why is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and Robert E. Lee’s birthday on the same day?
Martin Luther King, Jr. Day is observed on the third Monday of every January. His actual birthday was Jan. 15, 1929.
This year, that happens to be Jan. 19, which is also Lee’s actual birthday.
What Confederate holidays does Florida observe?
Why does Florida have Confederate holidays?
Various Confederate holidays were adopted by states across the South during the years after Reconstruction, historians say, when Confederate supporters were promoting the false “Lost Cause” mythology to downplay the causes of the Civil War and the evils of slavery and cast the leaders of the Confederacy as inspirational heroes.
Southern textbooks altered historical facts in lessons about the “War Between the States,” cities and counties were named or renamed, and Confederate monuments were erected in Southern public squares. Supporters say that the monuments, names, holidays and flag honored Southern ancestors who fought to defend states’ rights and their way of life.
There was another surge of Confederate monuments and Confederate flags across the South in response to civil rights expansion in the 1950s and 60s, the same period when King was becoming prominent in the Civil Rights movement, founding the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1957 and leading the 1963 March on Washington.
When did Florida add Confederate holidays to state law?
Confederate Memorial Day and Lee’s birthday were enshrined in Florida law in 1895, 30 years after the end of the Civil War. Jefferson Davis Day was added in 1905.
Who is Robert E. Lee?
West Point graduate Robert E. Lee of Virginia was such a celebrated warrior during the U.S.-Mexico War that his former mentor, Gen. Winfield Scott, asked him to lead Union forces against the South as tensions rose around Southern secession. Lee declined, saying he could not fight against his home state, and he resigned from the U.S. Army.
Instead, Lee commanded the Virginia state forces and became a general in the Confederate army, praised as a tactician who led his men to a mixed record of wins against vastly superior forces largely due to his aggressiveness on the field, according to historians.
But while he won major victories, he was often stalled by Union forces and was famously defeated at Gettysburg by Union Maj. Gen. George Meade. A few weeks after becoming general-in-chief of the Confederate states, Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House in Virginia on April 9, 1865, to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, against whom he had fought in several battles, including the Siege of Petersburg, which eventually destroyed most of Lee’s army.
Lee resisted efforts to build monuments in his honor after the war, preferring to move on, but after his death he was lionized into a cultural icon and the central figure of “The Lost Cause,” an effort to romanticize the war into a revisionist narrative that suggested the Civil War was a just response to perceived “Northern aggression.”
Among the many statues and plaques erected after his death, there are 12 counties in the U.S. named “Lee,” all in Southern states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia.
Lee County in Florida formed in 1887 from Monroe County, with Fort Myers, the site of the Civil War Battle of Fort Myers, as its county seat.
Does Florida recognize Robert E. Lee’s birthday and other Confederate holidays as paid holidays?
No. The three Confederate holidays are legal holidays but not official state holidays. Other legal holidays in Florida include Susan B. Anthony’s birthday, Good Friday, Pascua Florida Day (which marks the discovery of Florida in 1513 by Juan Ponce de Leon) and Flag Day.
Tuskegee Airmen Commemoration Day, observed on the fourth Thursday in March, was added in 2024 to honor the country’s first Black military pilots, many of whom were from Florida.
In 2025, Florida lawmakers added “Josiah T. Walls Day” to honor a former enslaved Black man pressed into Confederate service who was captured and volunteered to fight for the U.S., rising to the rank of Sergeant Major and serving as an artillery instructor.
After his service, he remained in Florida, represented Alachua County in Florida’s constitutional convention, served as a state representative and state senator, and became the first Black Floridian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. He was reelected twice before coming back to Florida and serving two more terms in the state Senate.
Josiah T. Walls Day will be recognized for the first time this year on May 15, 2026.
King had big Florida presence
King was a tireless advocate for civil rights in America, fighting to make Black voices heard amidst the racist oppression and violence across the country and facing countless personal threats, harassment and arrests.
Some of that happened here.
Florida led the country with the highest number of lynchings per capita in the first half of the 20th century. Mobs of white men attacked, burned and devastated Black communities in Ocoee and Rosewood. Carver Village in Miami was bombed in 1951, and Harry and Harriette Moore were killed in a bombing on Christmas Eve in Mims the same year. Jim Crow laws prevailed, along with discriminatory housing and Sundown towns, where Black people could work inside city limits but had to leave before night fell.
But marches and protests for civil rights and sit-ins at whites-only restaurants, businesses, swimming pools and beaches increased and began receiving national attention.
King came to St. Augustine to take part in an attempted sit-in at Monson Motor Lodge in June of 1964, where Black and White protesters had jumped into the “whites-only” pool only to jump out when the manager started dumping muriatic acid in. King and several other people were arrested.
King returned to St. Augustine several times, stayed with several Black leaders and spoke at multiple churches. The St. Augustine Record found out the location of one house where King was due to stay and printed it. The house was shot at, burned and vandalized in two incidents, but no one was injured.
King also came to Miami several times to engage residents and encourage voter registration. Historians believe that King delivered an early version of his famous “I Have a Dream” speech there at the historic Hampton House in 1960, three years before the March on Washington. In Daytona Beach, King visited to talk to Black leader and educator Mary McLeod Bethune and once delivered a commencement address at what was then known as Bethune-Cookman College, now Bethune-Cookman University.
King also made stops on the Space Coast, Cocoa Beach and Orlando.
What states celebrate Robert E. Lee’s birthday?
Alabama and Mississippi still recognize all three days as paid holidays for state employees. North Carolina lists Lee’s birthday and Confederate Memorial Day. Arkansas has a Robert E. Lee Day on the second Saturday in October, along with Davis’ birthday.
After Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday became a federal holiday in 1983, several states combined MLK and Lee celebrations out of convenience to create “King-Lee Day” or “MLK-Lee Day.” All but Alabama and Mississippi later separated them again. Virginia, Lee’s home state, added King to their existing Lee-Jackson Day, which also honored Confederate Gen. Stonewall Jackson, until it was split up in 2000. Virginia continued to observe Lee-Jackson Day until 2021.
In the same year (2000) that South Carolina finally recognized King with a state holiday, the state also added Confederate Memorial Day.
Tennessee observed Lee’s birthday from 1917 to 1969 when it was changed to a “special day of observance,” but state law requires the governor to proclaim Jan. 19 as Robert E. Lee Day, along with Confederate Decoration Day (June 3), Nathan Bedford Forrest Day (July 13) and Davis’ birthday.
Louisiana honored Lee’s birthday until 2022, when it was successfully removed from the state holiday calendar. Texas has celebrated “Lee Day” since 1931, but changed it to Confederate Heroes Day in 1973. Georgia commemorated Lee in November and Confederate Memorial Day in April, but in 2015, both holidays were replaced with unnamed “State Holidays.”
Why does Florida still have Confederate holidays?
Former Sen. Lauren Book, D-Davie, tried in 2017, 2021 and 2022 to have Confederate holidays stricken from Florida Statutes, with the last two attempts also trying to remove state statutes 256.051 and 256.10 that put “the flags of the Confederacy” on par with the American flag
“As a State, we must underscore diversity and undercut tributes to Confederacy, which upheld the institution of slavery,” Book said in a statement in 2021. “With the hate and divisiveness we’re seeing today, it is more important than ever to condemn racism and reaffirm that we are indeed ‘one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all — not just for some.”
The bills faced intense opposition in the Florida Legislature from lawmakers who said that Confederate holidays and memorials represent history and heritage. They objected to what they called the erasure of history and the rise of “cancel culture.”
All of Book’s bills died in committee.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Why is Florida honoring Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert E. Lee the same day?
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Fort Myers News-Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
