Leadership matters.
Note to my future self.
Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger just ended 76 years of state subsidies to Confederate organizations.
This week she signed HB 167, stripping tax-exempt status from six Confederate-linked groups — including the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and the Confederate Memorial Literary Society.
Notably, these exemptions date back not to the Civil War but to 1950 — Virginia’s “massive resistance” era, when the state was fighting integration. The tax breaks weren’t an oversight but a policy choice to prop up white supremacy.
For example the United Daughters of the Confederacy Richmond headquarters had been avoiding an estimated \$50,000 a year in property taxes. Money that didn’t go to public schools or infrastructure in a majority-Black city.
The previous governor vetoed earlier versions of this bill twice — in 2024 and again in 2025. It took a new governor and a Democratic legislature to get it done. Spanberger also signed a bill ending Virginia’s specialty license plates honoring Robert E. Lee and the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
It is 161 years after the end of the Civil War. And we just stopped subsidizing the organizations that romanticized the side that lost it.
Leadership matters.
Notes To My Future Self 