Virginia Democrats on Wednesday sharply criticized a proclamation signed by GOP Gov. Bob McDonnell that celebrated Confederate History Month while making no mention of slavery.
“I hope [McDonnell] will revise that proclamation to give an inference to who Virginians really are, and what they feel is celebratory,” said former Virginia Democratic Gov. L. Douglas Wilder in an interview with POLITICO’s Arena’ forum.
“How can you say that something that was detrimental and antithetical to [African-Americans’] being is something that anyone could be celebrating?” added Wilder, the first African-American to be elected the state's governor.
About 20 percent of Virginia's population is African-American.
The state’s two most recent Democratic governors did not issue a proclamation, which had been revived in Virginia by GOP Gov. George Allen in 1997.
Not only did McDonnell revive the proclamation, but the new language removes a line inserted by Republican Gov. Jim Gilmore in 1999 recognizing “that slavery was one of the causes” of the Civil War.
Virginia’s Legislative Black Caucus and the Virginia chapter of the NAACP condemned the proclamation on Tuesday.
In a statement, Virginia Del. Kenneth Alexander, who serves as chairman of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus said “Gov. McDonnell's proclamation was offensive and offered a disturbing revision of the Civil War and the brutal era that followed. Virginia has worked hard to move beyond the very things for which Gov. McDonnell seems nostalgic.”
Democratic state Sen. Mary Margaret Whipple said on MSNBC Wednesday that “Gov. McDonnell’s proclamation is very troubling to me and many others because it only portrays one side of the story.”
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