Justin Fairfax Protests Tribute to Stonewall Jackson

When the VA Senate moved to pay tribute to Confederate Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s birthday, VA Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax -- the state’s first Black statewide elected official in almost 30 years -- chose to hand over the gavel to another official and left his presiding post in protest. After VA state Senator Emmett W. Hanger Jr. (R) called for an adjournment in honor of Jackson, Fairfax stepped off the dais and moved to a bench normally occupied by Senate pages. Fairfax had been told last Friday that the Senate would pay tribute to Jackson and Robert E. Lee (though the Lee plans were scrapped due to “logistics”). Fairfax, in turn, told Republicans that he would step aside temporarily rather than preside over either tribute. “There are people in Virginia history that I think it’s appropriate to memorialize and remember that way, and others that I would have a difference of opinion on,” he said afterward. “I just wanted to, in a very respectful but very definite way, make it clear that these were not adjournment motions that I felt comfortable presiding over, and I was not going to do it.” More here.