WASHINGTON >> For nearly a century, Democrats have honored two men as the founders of their party: Thomas Jefferson, for his visionary expression of the concept of equality, and Andrew Jackson, for his populist spirit and elevation of the common man.

Political candidates and activists across the country have flocked to annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners, where speeches are given, money is raised, and the party celebrates its past and its future.

But these time-honored rituals are colliding with a modern Democratic Party more energized by a desire for racial and gender inclusion than reverence for history. And state by state, Democratic activists are removing the names of Jefferson and Jackson from party gatherings, saying the two men no longer represent what it means to be a Democrat.

The Iowa Democratic Party became the latest to do so last weekend, joining Georgia, Connecticut and Missouri. At least five other states are considering the same change since the massacre in June at an African-American church in Charleston, S.C.

“The vote today confirms that our party believes it is important to change the name of the dinner to align with the values of our modern-day Democratic Party: inclusiveness, diversity and equality,” said Andy McGuire, the Iowa Democratic chairwoman.

For all the attention this summer to the fight over the Confederate battle flag, the less noticed moves by Democratic parties to remove Jefferson and Jackson from their official identity underscore one of the most consequential trends of U.S. politics: Democrats’ shift from a union-powered party organized primarily around economic solidarity to one shaped by racial and sexual identity.

The parallel forces of class and identity, at times in tension and at times in unison, have defined the Democratic Party in recent decades. But the country’s changing demographics, the diverse nature of President Barack Obama’s coalition and the animating energy of the Black Lives Matter movement have also thrust fundamental questions about race, gender and economic equality to the center of the Democratic presidential race.

The shift can be seen as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., a socialist running for the Democratic Party’s nomination for president whose campaign is shaped by class-oriented progressive politics, has been confronted by black activists demanding answers for how he would address inequities they believe are derived entirely from racial discrimination.

Sanders, 73, is trying to adjust to a changing party, sometimes uncomfortably. He is now speaking more explicitly about policing, has hired an African-American spokeswoman and has added more diversity on stage at his heavily attended rallies.

The move to erase Jefferson and Jackson is not being welcomed by all Democrats. Some of them fear the party loses what has long been its unifying philosophy by removing the names of founders, whose virtues and flaws illuminated the way forward. And they worry that as the labor movement declines, cultural liberalism is beginning to eclipse a fundamental message of economic equality that brought about some of the party’s most important achievements, from the New Deal to Medicaid.

“What does the Democratic Party stand for?” asked Andrei Cherny, a Democratic writer and a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton. “Jefferson and Jackson and the ideas they stood for, spreading economic opportunity and democracy, were the beginnings of what was the Democratic Party. That is what unified the party across regional and other lines for most of the last 200 years. Now what unites everybody from Kim Kardashian to a party activist in Kansas is cultural liberalism and civil rights.”

Still, the motions have passed easily in the state parties that have considered them, with activists arguing that the two men no longer fit the party’s essential principles. Thomas Jefferson, while writing that “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, owned more than 600 slaves during his life, and it was slave labor that built and tilled the land at his Virginia estate, Monticello. He freed only a handful of them upon his death.

Andrew Jackson was also a slave owner and did not seem to wrestle with the morality of the institution, as Jefferson did at times. As president, he also consigned thousands of Native Americans to death by removing them from their homes in the South and pushing them west on what became known as the Trail of Tears.

Stacey Abrams, the minority leader of the Georgia House, said that the state party stripped Jefferson and Jackson from the name of the dinner to tell “the entire story of our party.”

“The best political parties are ones that reflect their core values and celebrate their members,” she said.

It is partly because of the efforts of Democratic presidents that Jefferson and Jackson enjoy the standing they do. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the father of modern economic liberalism, was particularly devoted to elevating the two men, rushing to complete the Jefferson Memorial so his party could have a monument to compete with the Republicans’ Lincoln Memorial. And it was the house intellectual of the Kennedy clan, Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who did so much to restore Jackson with his seminal biography, “The Age of Jackson.”

In more recent times, Bill Clinton memorably began his presidency with a pre-inaugural trip to Monticello and Obama took the president of France there last year and declared, “Thomas Jefferson represents what’s best in America,” while noting Jefferson’s “complex” relationship with slavery.

The difficulty today, explained Jon Meacham, author of biographies of both Jefferson and Jackson, is how to distinguish between commemoration and celebration. Meacham said he was sympathetic to the decision to remove the names from the dinners because they more clearly seem to venerate the two former presidents.

“But is the Jefferson Memorial commemoration or celebration?” he asked. “It’s certainly both. What do you do with that?”

Some leading Democrats, such as L. Douglas Wilder, say the issue for the party is a straightforward one, likening it to the controversy over the Washington Redskins name.

Wilder, the grandson of slaves and the first elected black governor in American history, comes from a state, Virginia, with a political culture marinated in reverence for the founding fathers and particularly Jefferson, who designed the state’s Capitol and created its flagship university.

But he bluntly dismissed Jefferson, while altruistic, as “a hypocrite” and said that the idea of honoring the two figures because of their commitment to empowering the common man was dishonest to history.

“What little guy did they have in mind?” he asked. “Did they have the little slave in mind?”

The paradox, Cherny noted, is that the two Democratic icons are being cast aside at a time when anger about racial inequality and anger toward financial institutions are two of the most stirring forces on the left.

“This is a moment where the issues Jefferson raised around equality of opportunity and the populism that Andrew Jackson brought to American politics for the first time are more salient now than they’ve ever been in decades,” he said.

The Jefferson-Jackson dinners — “JJs” in the shorthand of political operatives and insiders — are a staple of the political calendar.

It was at a Jefferson-Jackson dinner in Iowa where Obama delivered one of his best campaign speeches in the 2008 campaign, putting himself on a path to win the state’s caucuses and ultimately break the presidential color barrier.

Such progress is why many in the party feel they must borrow from Jefferson himself, who said that “as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”

Abrams said, “We not only want to move the country forward, but we recognize that we can’t be anchored by a history that diminished any of our fellow citizens.”

© 2015 The New York Times Company