You don’t need to be a neo-confederate to think Martin Luther King Day was not the right way to include the civil rights struggle in our national observances. Steve Sailer suggests keeping MLK Day, but moving it to the last Monday in August, to commemorate the “I have a Dream Speech” instead of his birthday. After all, we’ve had more than enough time off the past two months and two three-day weekends in a row (MLK Day and then Labor Day) would come in mighty handy in the summer.

I have a different idea: replace MLK Day altogether with Emancipation Day, on June 19. This is the date in 1865 when the slaves in Texas learned they’d been freed (two and a half years earlier) by President Lincoln. The holiday, known as “Juneteenth,” has been an official holiday in Texas since 1980 but has spread organically throughout the country; additional plusses are that it’s also during the summer (almost) and it doesn’t focus onto one man the entire effort to incorporate our black compatriots into our political community.