The Mississippi State Flag and the Confederate Flag Symbols of Oppression
The last official remnant of the Confederate Flag has ended. This comes 155 years after Confederate General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Union General Ulysses Grant at Appomattox, Virginia on April 9, 1865. Slavery ended September 22, 1862 when President Abraham Lincoln and his government passed the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Confederate States’ economy was agrarian. It relied heavily on slaves to work the Plantations and farms. Confederates wanted to continue slavery.
The Confederate Flag is associated with Slavery – and ‘Jim Crow Laws.’
After the Civil War – during reconstruction, southern states passed laws that marginalized African Americans. State and local laws were passed legalizing Segregation in schools, public places, washrooms, restaurants, pubic transit and more and people became indentured farm workers with limited economic opportunity. The right to vote was curtailed by ‘Jim Crow Laws.’
The Confederate Flag continued as a symbol of slavery, and the segregationist ‘Jim Crow Laws’ enacted in many Southern States after the Civil War.
The name “Jim Crow” was the stage name of entertainer Thomas Dartmouth ‘Daddy’ Rice. In the 1830s he put on ‘Black Face’ and pretended to be an ill-educated, stereo-type African American Slave. The ‘Jim Crow’ name came from the song, “Jump Jim Crow” he preformed. Changes to segregation began in 1948 with President Harry Truman’s Executive Order 9981 that abolished discrimination in the American Military based on “… race, colour, religion or national origin.” This led to the end of Segregation in the military in 1950, during the Korean War.
A notable story is that of Rosa Parks. In 1955 she was riding a Montgomery, Alabama public transit bus after work, heading home from her job. ‘Coloureds’ had to sit in the back of the bus, Whites in the front. When the front section was full, White people sat in the Coloured section and those there had to give up their seat. Rosa would not give up her seat when asked. She was arrested. The case went to the Supreme Court and Rosa won – the busses were de-segregated.
Change has been slow. Many of the remnants of ‘Jim Crow’ continue, including efforts to limit voter registrations