View from the South: Miss. governor says Virginia’s Confederate History Month is no big deal

Miss. gov says Confederacy flap not worth ‘diddly’

NEW ORLEANS — The dustup over Virginia’s proclamation for Confederate History Month seems like a lot of noise over something that “doesn’t amount to diddly,” Mississippi’s governor said in an interview aired Sunday.

Virginia’s Republican governor, Bob McDonnell, apologized for leaving out of his proclamation any reference to slavery. He added language to the decree calling slavery “evil and inhumane” after being criticized for reviving what many Virginians believe is an insensitive commemoration of its Confederate past.

Fellow GOP Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi said he doesn’t think the proclamation was a mistake.

“To me, it’s a sort of feeling that it’s a nit, that it is not significant, that it’s not a — it’s trying to make a big deal out of something (that) doesn’t amount to diddly,” Barbour said in the interview aired on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Last year, Barbour issued a similar proclamation in his state that did not mention slavery. He also noted that his state has a holiday, Confederate Memorial Day, that has been maintained by Democratic and Republican governors and the state’s majority-Democrat legislature. The state also honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Confederate general Robert E. Lee on the same day in January.

Barbour said he was not aware of any complaints that the holiday was offensive.

“I don’t really see what to say about slavery, but anybody that thinks that you have to explain to some people that slavery is a bad thing, I think that goes without saying,” Barbour said.

Mississippi’s events aren’t embraced by everyone.

“I think it’s unfortunate that the governor is so insensitive to the atrocities made against African-Americans in this country by the former Confederate States,” said Derrick Johnson, president of the Mississippi NAACP. “As governor of the state with a higher percentage of African-Americans that any other, we would hope he would be more sensitive to them.”

“We have always raised out opposition to any memorial day that would raise some type of positive light on the Confederacy that broke away from the United States,” Johnson said. “We consider that treason.”

McDonnell revised the proclamation after a day of scalding denunciations as the story became grist for cable news shows and caught fire on political blogs and in social media.

McDonnell had issued the Confederate History Month proclamation at the behest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, descendants of rebel soldiers. McDonnell was the first Virginia governor to issue such a proclamation since fellow Republican Jim Gilmore in 2001. Democrats Mark Warner and Kaine, who succeeded Gilmore, refused.