Mississippi drops Confederate-themed flag
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — With a stroke of the governor’s pen, Mississippi is retiring the last state flag in the U.S. with the Confederate battle emblem — a symbol that’s widely condemned as racist.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the historic bill Tuesday at the Governor’s Mansion, immediately removing official status for the 126-year-old banner that has been a source of division for generations.
“This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together, to be reconciled and to move on,” Reeves said on live TV just before the signing. “We are a resilient people defined by our hospitality. We are a people of great faith. Now, more than ever, we must lean on that faith, put our divisions behind us, and unite for a greater good.”
Mississippi has faced increasing pressure to change its flag since protests against racial injustice have focused attention on Confederate symbols in recent weeks.
A broad coalition of legislators on Sunday passed the landmark legislation to change the flag, capping a weekend of emotional debate and decades of effort by Black lawmakers and others who see the rebel emblem as a symbol of hatred.
Among
the small group of dignitaries witnessing the bill signing were Reuben
Anderson, who was the first African American justice on the Mississippi
Supreme Court, serving from 1985 to 1991; Willie Simmons, a current
state Transportation Commissioner who is the first African American
elected to that job; and Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of civil rights
icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers.
Medgar Evers, a Mississippi NAACP
leader, was assassinated in the family’s driveway in 1963. Myrlie Evers
was national chairwoman of the NAACP in the mid-1990s and is still
living.
“That Confederate symbol is not who Mississippi is now.
It’s not what it was in 1894, either, inclusive of all Mississippians,”
Evers-Everette said after the ceremony. “But now we’re going to a place
of total inclusion and unity with our hearts along with our thoughts and
in our actions.”
Reeves used several pens to sign the bill. As he
completed the process, a cheer could be heard from people outside the
Governor’s Mansion who were watching the livestream broadcast on their
phones. Reeves handed the pens to lawmakers and others who had worked on
the issue.
The Confederate battle emblem has a red field topped
by a blue X with 13 white stars. White supremacist legislators put it on
the upper-left corner of the Mississippi flag in 1894, as white people
were squelching political power that African Americans had gained after
the Civil War.
Critics have said for generations that it’s wrong
for a state where 38% of the people are Black to have a flag marked by
the Confederacy, particularly since the Ku Klux Klan and other hate
groups have used the symbol to promote racist agendas.
Mississippi
voters chose to keep the flag in a 2001 statewide election, with
supporters saying they saw it as a symbol of Southern heritage. But
since then, a growing number of cities and all the state’s public
universities have abandoned it.
Several Black legislators, and a
few white ones, kept pushing for years to change it. After a white
gunman who had posed with the Confederate flag killed Black worshipers
at a South Carolina church in 2015, Mississippi’s Republican speaker of
the House, Philip Gunn, said his religious faith compelled him to say
that Mississippi must purge the symbol from its flag.
The issue
was still broadly considered too volatile for legislators to touch,
until the police custody death of an African American man in
Minneapolis, George Floyd, set off weeks of sustained protests against
racial injustice, followed by calls to take down Confederate symbols.
A
groundswell of young activists, college athletes and leaders from
business, religion, education and sports called on Mississippi to make
this change, finally providing the momentum for legislators to vote.
Before
the bill signing Tuesday, state employees raised and lowered several of
the flags on a pole outside the Capitol. The secretary of state’s
office sells flags for $20 each, and a spokeswoman said there has been a
recent increase in requests.
During recent news conferences,
Reeves refused to say whether he thought the Confederate-themed flag
properly represents present-day Mississippi, sticking to a position he
ran on last year, when he promised that if the flag design was going to
be reconsidered, it would be done in another statewide election.
Now,
a commission will design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate
symbol and must have the words “In God We Trust.” Voters will be asked
to approve it in the Nov. 3 election. If they reject it, the commission
will draft a different design using the same guidelines, to be sent to
voters later.
Reeves said before signing over the flag’s demise,
“We are all Mississippians and we must all come together. What better
way to do that than include ‘In God We Trust’ on our new state banner.”
He
added: “The people of Mississippi, black and white, and young and old,
can be proud of a banner that puts our faith front and center. We can
unite under it. We can move forward — together.”