Editor’s note: The headline on this story has been corrected. A previous version incorrectly stated that the emblem had been stripped from the Mississippi flag, though lawmakers had not yet voted as of publication. The following day, however, a bill to decommission the flag was passed.
Mississippi is on the verge of changing its state flag to erase a Confederate battle emblem that’s broadly condemned as racist.
The flag’s supporters resisted efforts to change it for decades, but rapid developments in recent weeks have changed dynamics on this issue in the tradition-bound state.
As protests against racial injustice recently spread across the U.S., including Mississippi, leaders from business, religion, education and sports have spoken forcefully against the state flag. They have urged legislators to ditch the 126-year-old banner for one that better reflects the diversity of a state with a 38 per cent Black population.
Legislators were meeting Sunday and were expected to vote on a bill to remove the current flag from state law. A commission would design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate symbol and that must have the words “In God We Trust.”
The state House and Senate met Saturday and took a big step: By two-thirds margins, they suspended legislative deadlines so a flag bill could be filed. Spectators cheered as each chamber voted, and legislators seeking the change embraced each other.
“There are economic issues. There are issues involving football or whatever,” Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann said Saturday. “But this vote came from the heart. That makes it so much more important.”
Democratic Sen. David Jordan, who is African American, has pushed for decades to change the flag. He smiled broadly after Saturday’s vote and said, “This is such a metamorphosis.”
Mississippi has the last state flag with the Confederate battle emblem — a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The flag has been divisive for generations. All of the state’s public universities have stopped flying it, as have a growing number of cities and counties.
White supremacists in the Mississippi Legislature set the state flag design in 1894 during backlash to the political power that African Americans gained after the Civil War.
In 2000, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled that the flag lacked official status. State laws were updated in 1906, and portions dealing with the flag were not carried forward. Legislators set a flag election in 2001, and voters kept the rebel-themed design.
Former state Rep. Steve Holland was at the Capitol on Sunday urging legislators to change the flag. As a Democratic House member in 2000, Holland served on a commission that held public hearings about the flag. He said Sunday that he and other commissioners received death threats back then.
Holland, who is white, said he voted in the 2001 election to keep the flag but he now sees the rebel symbol as harmful.
“People have changed,” Holland said. “The country’s changed. The world has changed.”
Former Ole Miss basketball player Blake Hinson told his hometown Daytona Beach (Florida) News-Journal that the Mississippi flag played a part in his decision to transfer to Iowa State.
“It was time to go and leave Ole Miss,” Hinson said. “I’m proud not to represent that flag anymore and to not be associated with anything representing the Confederacy.”
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Saturday for the first time that he would sign a bill to change the flag if the Republican-controlled Legislature sends him one.
Reeves and many other politicians have said people should get to vote on a flag design in another statewide election. The new design — without the Confederate symbol — will be put on the ballot Nov. 3, but it will be the only choice. If a majority voting that day accept the new design, it will become the state flag. If a majority reject it, the commission will design a new flag using the same guidelines.
People wanting to keep the Confederate-themed flag could gather more than 100,000 signatures to put that design up for statewide election. It’s too late to get it on the ballot this November, though, because of timelines set in state law.