Lexington County didn’t say ‘Confederate Memorial Day’ in announcing closure
Lexington County, one of the state’s largest counties, is one of eight in South Carolina recognizing Confederate Memorial Day in 2025. The holiday is meant to honor Confederate soldiers who died during the American Civil War.
The county has been recognizing the holiday, which is celebrated in South Carolina on May 10, since 2004, when Lexington County Council voted to celebrate both it and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, according to reporting at the time.
Lexington announced its plans to close county offices Friday preceding the holiday on social media on Wednesday, May 7, without indicating the reason behind the closure. When announcing office closures for other holidays, such as Thanksgiving or New Year’s Day, the county has indicated what holiday was being observed.
When asked why the county did not announce the reason for the closure, Vanessa Diaz, the county’s public information officer, said that’s what had been done previously for Confederate Memorial Day and that she was following precedent from the previous spokesperson.
“I’m not sure whether she was instructed to omit that information, but I was simply asked to recreate and make the graphic better and followed the existing precedent,” she told The State in an email.
County council chairman Todd Cullum said the initial decision to recognize the holiday was made in order to be consistent with the state. South Carolina added both MLK Jr. Day and Confederate Memorial Day to its list of state-recognized holidays in 2000.
“We had a different holiday schedule than some of the other folks like the banks and the school district. In order for us to try to coordinate or try to keep some consistency, we determined that we as a county would take the same holidays as the state,” Cullum told The State newspaper.
The county isn’t required to follow all state holidays, and most of the 46 counties in South Carolina don’t observe the holiday. Lexington is the largest county in the state to recognize the holiday – which is also recognized as an official state holiday in Alabama, Mississippi and Texas. Seven other counties will close their offices this year for the holiday, which many consider controversial.
“Confederate symbols have been used by white supremacists as tools of racial terror,” the Southern Poverty Law Center said in a statement denouncing the holiday in 2021, calling memorials to the Confederacy “an organized propaganda campaign created to instill fear.”
Some county council members in Lexington view it differently. Councilwoman Charli Wessinger, who was not on council when the day was added to the County’s observed holidays, said she believes there’s historical value tied to the day and that remembering soldiers who died during the Civil War is important. When asked if she’d be interested in council removing the holiday from the list of ones Lexington observes, she said no.
“There are a lot of groups, of all races, that sacrificed loved ones in wars and that holiday specifically honors all fallen soldiers,” Wessinger said. “If it’s recognized at the state level, if that’s something that the state wants to change and the county wants to adopt that, then that would be something to address at that point.”
Lexington, which was for decades rural and is predominantly white, has seen its population more than triple since 1970, adding some 220,000 people to the county just outside the state’s capital.
This story was originally published May 8, 2025 at 12:48 PM.
