Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) silently declared April to be ‘Confederate History Month’ for the third year in a row, according to the Mississippi Free Press.
A Twitter user alerted the outlet to a copy of the proclamation that was posted on the Facebook page of the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ Camp since Reeves never announced it publicly. The proclamation shows that the governor signed it on April 8, 2022.
“April is the month when, in 1861, the American Civil War began between the Confederate and Union armies, reportedly the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil,” the proclamation says.
It notes that the last Monday of April is Confederate Memorial Day in Mississippi to “honor those who served in the Confederacy.”
Reeves also declared April as ‘Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month.’ This proclamation he publicly shared on social media last month.
“The systematic destruction of lives has spanned areas and cultures from Armenia to Darfur, the Holodomor to the Holocaust,” Reeves tweeted on March 15, 2022. “Genocide has no place in society, and we must do everything we can to prevent it.”
The proclamation defines genocide as “the systematic destruction of all or a significant part of a racial, ethnic, religious or national group by destroying a group’s political and social institutions, culture, language, national feelings, religion and economic existence, and destroying the personal security, liberty, health, dignity and lives of individuals belonging to the group.”
However, the proclamation made no mention of slavery or the destruction of Native American cultures, the Mississippi Free Press noted.
“For the last 30 years, five Mississippi governors—Republicans and Democrats alike—have signed a proclamation recognizing the statutory state holiday and identifying April as Confederate Heritage Month,” Reeve’s office said in a statement. “Gov. Reeves also signed the proclamation because he believes we can all learn from our history.”
This comes after Reeves signed a bill into law that bans Mississippi schools from teaching critical race theory even though the lawmakers who wrote the bill have no idea what the academic theory is and admitted to being unable to identify any K-12 public schools in the state that teach CRT.
The bill is part of a larger push by Republican-controlled states to whitewash some aspects of history which they claim “humiliates” white people and makes white students feel guilty because of their race, or Black students feel that they are inherently a victim because of their race.
Still, the proclamation says that “as we honor all who lost their lives in the war, it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us.”
