RICHMOND, Virginia – Descendants of two Confederate generals appeared in the Virginia Senate Monday to show their support for Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who days earlier sat out a Republican senator’s ode to Robert E. Lee.

The Rev. Robert W. Lee IV, the great-great-great-great nephew of Lee, and Warren Christian, the great-great grandson of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, oppose tributes to their confederate ancestors. They have done so publicly since 2017, when the proposed removal of Gen. Lee’s statue in Charlottesville, Virginia, was the rallying cry for a white supremacist rally that turned deadly.

Fairfax, D, a descendant of slaves and only the second African-American elected statewide in Virginia history, invited Lee and Christian to the Senate session on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which this year happened to fall on Stonewall Jackson’s birthday.

“As a Robert Lee, I want to be a different footnote in history,” Lee said in an interview afterward. “And I want to stand with Justin Fairfax … and say that honoring the racist white supremacist past that we hold with statues, with mentions … on the floor of the commonwealth’s legislature is a no-go for me, and a no-go for so many people of goodwill in the South.”

He and Christian were recognized in the Senate gallery but made no remarks to the body. Republicans who have sponsored Confederate tributes in recent years did not react to their appearance and were not immediately available for comment, as their floor session continued throughout the afternoon.

On Friday, Fairfax, who presides over Richmond’s upper chamber, stepped off the dais and let a Republican wield the gavel while Sen. Richard Stuart, R-King George, marked Lee’s 212th birthday with praise for “a great Virginian and a great American.”

In his speech, Stuart tried to separate Lee from the issue of slavery, noting the general’s efforts to bring about reconciliation after the war.

Christian said he agreed with the notion that the Confederate generals were complex people, but he still thinks modern-day tributes to them are misguided.

“I think he certainly did some honorable things and I’m happy to celebrate some of those things, for instance, teaching enslaved people how to read during Sunday school, which at the time would have been illegal,” Christian said, referring to Jackson. “But today that’s not what they’re going to celebrate. They’re going to celebrate him for fighting the Civil War and fighting to maintain slavery.”

Fairfax, whose great-great-great grandfather, Simon Fairfax, had been enslaved in Virginia, said it was notable that the descendants of Confederate generals opposed the tributes.

“To have the three of us – the great-great-great grandson of Simon Fairfax, Robert E. Lee’s descendant and Stonewall Jackson’s descendant – stand in solidarity together and say we need to take this commonwealth, this country, in a different, more positive, more uplifting course, I think sends a signal of hope and light out into the world,” Fairfax said.

Praising generals Lee and Jackson is nothing new in Virginia’s General Assembly. Legislators from both parties have traditionally noted their birthdays with short floor speeches. Comedian Stephen Colbert lampooned the Virginia Senate in 2013 for adjourning its MLK Day session in honor of Confederate Gen. Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson – on a motion from a Democrat, state Sen. R. Creigh Deeds of Bath.

Such tributes have become more politically fraught in recent years amid the push to remove monuments and rename schools and roads honoring Confederate leaders. Fairfax, who was sworn into office a year ago and is expected to run for governor in 2021, bowed out of last year’s tributes as well.

“The prophetic witness of standing with people in solidarity is something my family espouses now,” Lee said. “We may not have espoused that in the 19th century, but by God, we’re gonna make it right now.”