Flag stirs Ole Miss rallies

An integrated group of at least 200 students and faculty members rallied Friday at the University of Mississippi in Oxford, urging the Ole Miss administration to stop flying the state flag that includes the Confederate battle emblem.

About a dozen Confederate flag supporters showed up at the end of the rally, and some wore T-shirts with the logo of an Arkansas-based Ku Klux Klan group, the International Keystone Knights.

Shouting broke out between the two sides, but there was no violence, said Allen Coon of Petal, a white Ole Miss student who wants to remove the flag.

“We made sure that it remained peaceful,” said Coon, 20, an Associated Student Body senator who is sponsoring a take-downthe-flag resolution the student government will debate next week.

The Mississippi flag and other Old South symbols have come under increased scrutiny since June, when nine black worshippers were slain at a church in South Carolina. Police say the killings were racially motivated, and the suspect had posed for photos holding the Confederate battle flag.

The Mississippi flag has had the Confederate battle emblem — a blue X with 13 white stars, over a red field — since 1894. Voters chose to keep the flag in a 2001 election.

Several Mississippi cities and counties have taken down the state flag since the Charleston slayings, and some business groups and university leaders, including those at Ole Miss, have said the banner should be redesigned. Republican Gov. Phil Bryant has said if the flag is going to be reconsidered, it should be done in another statewide vote.

The take-down-the-flag rally was sponsored by the campus NAACP. Protesters held signs that said, “Straight Outta Patience” and “Your Heritage is Hate.”

Buka Okoye, the campus NAACP president, told The Associated Press that he respects people who want to honor their ancestors but keeping the Confederate emblem on the state flag is the wrong way to do it. “It shouldn’t be at the expense of all Mississippians,” said Okoye, a 20-year-old public policy major from Clinton, Miss.