New Ole Miss player speaks out against the state flag
Ole Miss tight end Kenny Yeboah took to Twitter on Friday to speak out against Mississippi's state flag.
"It's crazy that as an African American student-athlete, I play for a team in a state that STILL has the Confederate flag incorporated into their flag.... STILL in 2020!!!" Yeboah said in his tweet.
Yeboah's comments came in the wake of racial tension and riots in Minnesota after the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck during an arrest.
Earlier Friday, Yeboah tweeted that "unless you have skin of color, you TRULY will never understand what we go through on a daily basis."
The Twitter posts were made after he recently retweeted comments about Floyd.
The flag of Mississippi consists of one horizontal red stripe, one horizontal blue stripe and one horizontal white stripe and includes the battle flag of the Confederacy in a box in the top left corner.
Ole Miss removed the state flag from its campus flagpole in 2015 and the flag is no longer flown at sporting events. Jackson State, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State, all historically black universities in Mississippi, have long not flown the state flag.
Yeboah is a graduate transfer tight end who transferred to Ole Miss from Temple early this year. A native of Allentown, Pennsylvania, Yeboah measures 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds and caught 19 passes for 233 yards and five touchdowns at Temple in 2019.
Prior to committing to Ole Miss, Yeboah had never visited the state of Mississippi, the tight end told 247Sports in February. Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin described Yeboah as "a very talented kid" who considered declaring for the 2020 NFL Draft before ultimately deciding to play one more college season in the SEC.
Contact Nick Suss at 601-408-2674 or nsuss@gannett.com. Follow @nicksuss on Twitter.