Schools lead way in Mississippi flag imagery debate

It’s fitting that the effort to ease Confederate imagery out of the public square in Mississippi should be led by the state’s institutions of higher learning. Colleges and universities were agents of change, as well, in the campaign against institutional racism during the civil rights era.

Last week, Mississippi State University lowered the state flag in many areas of the Starkville campus, making a significant statement about a banner on which the Confederate battle flag has been a prominent feature since 1894.

MSU thus joined a growing list of the state’s colleges and universities to recognize the state flag’s power to divide people and its alignment with the forces of bigotry and hate.

Those who object to the decision predictably argue that the 2001 referendum on the state flag should have settled the matter once and for all. The proposal to replace the section bearing the battle flag with a field of 20 stars to represent Mississippi’s status as the 20th state lost by a significant margin.

Whether the people of Mississippi still love the imagery as much as they did 15 years ago is questionable, but the use of the flag as a rallying symbol for white supremacists and Nazis has not diminished, epitomized by the slaughter of nine African-American church members by a flagwaving white supremacist in June 2015.

A year later, a resolution passed by the Southern Baptist Convention calling on members to discontinue displaying the flag “as a sign of solidarity of the whole Body of Christ, including our AfricanAmerican brothers and sisters” brought into the anti-flag fold a religious denomination that stands as an icon of Southern conservative values.

A number of Mississippi cities have lowered the state flag to symbolize their concurrence with the notion that the time for the flag to change has arrived.

The University of Mississippi has gone a couple of steps further by dropping the Colonel Reb mascot and discontinuing band performances of “Dixie,” an anthem that pays homage to the antebellum era, at the university’s football games.

It was against the wishes of a number of powerful state politicians that MSU joined the anti-flag contingent after requests to replace the Mississippi flag in several locations around the campus with a larger American flag were approved by MSU President Mark Keenum.

The issue had been on the radar of the school’s faculty senate and student association since 2001, a school spokesman said.

The decision should persuade the state legislature to revive its debate over the only state flag in the nation that still includes Confederate imagery.

The time has arrived for the state’s political leadership to follow the lead of its students and take this one step, at least, toward a more inclusive society.