In 2015, five months before the Charleston church shooting in South Carolina, Duda spearheaded an effort to abolish Robert E. Lee Day as a state holiday in Arkansas, currently celebrated on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the national holiday, by lobbying lawmakers and speaking to the media. "I think having Lee day on MLK day is just a jeer to the memory of the man who fought for equality," Duda told lawmakers. After two separate bills were drafted to end the confederate holiday, the proposed law failed four times to make it out of the Republican controlled committee. Arkansas is one of only three states (along with Alabama and Mississippi) that celebrates a Lee-King holiday.