On July 1, 2019, the Charlottesville City Council voted 4 to 1 to drop Thomas Jefferson's birthday as a city holiday; according to news stories, this was because Jefferson was a slave owner. In a separate vote, they unanimously created a new day of celebration called Liberation and Freedom Day, to be celebrated on March 3, the day in 1865 when Gen. Philip Sheridan's troops rolled through town and found a population that was majority enslaved - and although emancipation for most of them didn't occur on that day, it was the opening salvo for a lot of Charlottesvillians' freedom.