Jefferson Who? Democrats Are Disowning Their Founders

Matt Hennessy attended the Connecticut Democratic Party's annual fundraising dinner recently. He was surprised when Nick Balletto, the party's chair, announced that the name of the dinner will change next year.

Like other state and local Democrats around the country, those in Connecticut for decades have named their annual dinner after two of the party's primary founders: Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson. But after the killing of nine worshippers last month at a church in Charleston, S.C., party leaders have been rethinking the wisdom of honoring the two slave-owning presidents.

"Their names on this party event have the potential to interfere with party unity by appearing to honor slaveholders and an oppressor of Native Americans," said Hennessy, a Democratic consultant. (Jackson pursued a policy of "Indian removal" that might be likened to ethnic cleansing.)

It's in keeping with other debates that are taking place around political symbols such as the display of the Confederate flag. Minnesota is debating whether to remove paintings from its capitol that depict white settler and Army attacks on American Indians. (Although admittedly those paintings are not as blatantly offensive as the Indian slaughter murals at the fictional City Hall in the NBC sitcom Parks and Recreation.)

"As far as these symbolic gestures, these are perfectly legitimate, fine and polite things to do," said Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

But he cautioned that removing the name or images of old-time leaders who acted in ways that many now find abhorrent is not sufficient.

"We need not only to erase this stuff, but confront it," Thompson said.

Many are concerned that the "PC police" threaten to worsen historical amnesia by portraying leaders of the past as villains. Jefferson owned slaves, but he also wrote the Declaration of Independence, among other accomplishments still worth celebrating.

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