San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Lawmakers move toward erasing flag’s rebel image
JACKSON, Miss. — Spectators at the Mississippi Capitol cheered and applauded Saturday as lawmakers took a major step toward eliminating the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag, a symbol that has come under intensifying criticism amid nationwide protests against racial injustice.
“The eyes of the state, the nation and indeed the world are on this House,” Republican Rep. Jason White told his colleagues.
Mississippi has the last state flag with the Confederate battle emblem — a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. Many see the image as racist, and the flag has been divisive for generations in a state with a 38% Black population.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves said Saturday for the first time that he would sign a bill to change the flag if the Republicancontrolled Legislature sends him one. “The argument over the 1894 flag has become as divisive as the flag itself, and it’s time to end it,” Reeves said.
On Saturday, the House and Senate voted by more than the required twothirds majority to suspend legislative deadlines and file a bill to change the flag. That allows debate on a bill as soon as Sunday.
Saturday’s vote was the big test, though, because of the margin. Only a simple majority is needed to pass a bill.
“I would never have thought that I would see the flag come down in my lifetime,” said Democratic Sen. Barbara Blackmon of Canton, who is African American.
Under the bill, a commission will design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate battle emblem but must have the phrase “In God We Trust.” The new design will be put on the ballot Nov. 3. If a majority of voters 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.
“I know there are many good people who … believe that this flag is a symbol of our Southern pride and heritage,” said White, the Republican speaker pro tempore of the House. “But for most people throughout our nation and the world, they see
that flag and think that it stands for hatred and oppression.“
White supremacists in the Legislature set the state flag design in 1894 during backlash to the political power that African Americans gained after the Civil War.
All of the state’s public universities and several cities and counties have stopped flying it because of the Confederate symbol. Business, religious, education and sports groups are calling on Mississippi to drop the image.
People for and against the current flag filled the Capitol on Saturday.
Karen Holt of Edwards was with several people asking lawmakers to adopt a new banner with a magnolia, which is both the state tree and the state flower. She said it would represent “joy of being a citizen of the United States,” unlike the current flag.
“We don’t want anything flying over them, lofty, exalting itself, that grabs onto a deadly past,” Holt said.
Emily Wagster Pettus is an Associated Press writer.