Looking for “new Mississippi” as a state flag comes down
JACKSON, MISS.» The activists were infants when twothirds of Mississippians voted in 2001 to keep the state flag embedded with the battle emblem of the Confederacy. They grew up pledging allegiance to it in school, where they also learned about a history of segregation and oppression associated with the banner.
The activists, a band of Black Lives Matter organizers, marched last month through the streets of Jackson, the flag’s removal among their demands. But despite the fury, it seemed a false hope in a state that had proudly flown it for 126 years.
“The state flag, we thought, was a constant,” Calvert White, 20, said on a recent afternoon.
But in a matter of days, something that had seemed impossible was suddenly inevitable. State troopers folded the flag at the Capitol for the last time this month, a turnabout that was powered by a coalition of seemingly unlikely allies, including business-minded conservatives, Baptist ministers and the Black Lives Matter activists.
They were bound by a mutual affection for a state not always understood by the rest of the world and a recognition that the flag presented complications as Mississippi confronts a daunting roster of struggles.
The coalition also agrees that its triumph has created a sense of momentum. But that solidarity is being tested as they wrestle with what to do with it.
“Mississippi right now has a great opportunity to be a story of redemption, a story of our past but also a story of the hope for our future and how white and Black Mississippians worked together to get this done,” said Henry Barbour, a Republican strategist and a nephew of former Gov. Haley Barbour.
The fight over the flag reflected what many viewed as a desire in Mississippi to move beyond the state’s past. The Mississippi Baptist Convention declared removing the flag “a matter of biblical morality,” and veteran white lawmakers spoke in personal terms about their desire for unity.
The flag had weathered decades of protests and the toppling of Confederate relics across the South, and lawmakers and political observers, just weeks ago, were certain that any effort mounted this year would fail yet again.
The legacy of the Confederacy remains very much a part of present-day Mississippi. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican who took office this year, declared April as Confederate heritage month.
Polls showed that nearly half of the state did not want to change the flag, which many white Mississippians regard as a tribute to their Southern heritage and the blood shed by their ancestors in the Civil War.
It is a sentiment President Donald Trump has seized upon during his reelection effort, tapping into a deep well of fear and resentment as he cast himself as a guardian of that legacy.
But as protests erupted across the country in recent weeks after George Floyd died in the custody of Minneapolis police, the drive to change the flag swiftly gained new vigor as Confederate monuments were vandalized and removed throughout the region.
Then, the National Collegiate
Athletic Association and the Southeastern Conference announced that they were toughening their opposition to the battle emblem and would more aggressively penalize any state that sanctioned it, underscoring the economic repercussions posed by keeping the flag.
Legislation to change the flag was championed in large part by white Republican lawmakers and passed by wide margins. A new flag will be up for a statewide vote in November.
“It gives the citizens of Mississippi hope and reassurance that change can happen,” said Taylor Turnage, one of the Black Lives Matter organizers. “It’s OK to celebrate,” she cautioned, “but we can’t celebrate too long because we don’t want to relish this moment and forget a movement.”
But the coalition that was unified in tackling the flag has diverging ideas about how to push forward. Republican lawmakers and business leaders argued that taking down the flag was about removing a barrier and that the state needs to signal its hospitality for large corporations that would bring jobs and economic development.
Still, the Black Lives Matter activists and some Democrats believe the energy should be channeled into bolstering the social safety net, expanding Medicaid and boosting education funding.