Flag decision spiritual for many leaders

Mississippi officials held a ceremony Wednesday afternoon to formally relegate the former state flag to history, a day after Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed a new law removing official status from the last state banner in the U.S. that included the Confederate battle emblem.

The removal came after a last-minute Republican-led, bipartisan effort that required a suspension of the rules to pass the legislation over the weekend

A broad coalition of lawmakers — black and white, Democrat and Republican — voted Sunday for change amid chaos throughout much of the rest of the country over race and alleged police brutality following the police strangling death of George Floyd in Minnesota in May. 

Madison County’s delegation, a combination of three Republicans and two Democrats — all voted in favor of retiring the flag.

Freshman State Representative Jill Ford, a Republican who represents District 73 in Madison County, said she’s glad the Legislature did not go down a divisive path. Like the rest of the delegation that represents Madison County — State Senators J. Walter Michel (R-Ridgeland) and Barbara Blackmon (D-Canton), as well as State House Rep. Joel Bomgar (R-Madison) and Ed Blackmon (D-Canton) — Ford voted to retire the current flag in every step of the process.

“I am proud of the Legislative body and how we handled this in what I feel was a respectful and professional manner,” Ford said. “I wish our national leaders could tackle tough issues in the same way.”

Ford said she and her colleagues received thousands of emails, calls and texts in the week leading up to the vote regarding the flag.

“Knowing that Madison County voted to retire the flag in 2001 made it somewhat easier for me in my decision to vote yes,” Ford said. “But I grew up in Corinth, a Civil War town, and spent most of my elementary years visiting Shiloh Battlefield and my great, great grandfather fought for the Confederacy.

“At the end of the day, my decision was based solely on my conviction through prayer and studying of the scriptures, not through thousands of voices or opinions coming at me from all directions.”

Mississippi has a 38% black population, and critics have said for generations that it's wrong to have a flag that prominently features an emblem many associate with segregation and violence, mistreatment and even murder of blacks and others during the civil rights era.

Democratic Sen. David Jordan of Greenwood told his colleagues just before the vote that Mississippi needs a flag that unifies rather than divides.

“Let's do this because it's the right thing to do,” Jordan said.

The Senate voted 37-14 to retire the flag, hours after the House voted 91-23.

Cheers rang out in the state Capitol after the Senate vote. Some spectators wept. Legislators embraced each other, many hugging colleagues who were on the opposing side of an issue that has long divided the tradition-bound state.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed the bill into law on Tuesday.

“This is not a political moment to me but a solemn occasion to lead our Mississippi family to come together, to be reconciled, and to move on,” Reeves said. “We are a resilient people defined by our hospitality. We are a people of great faith. Now, more than ever, we must lean on that faith, put our divisions behind us, and unite for a greater good.”

Democratic Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez choked back tears as he told reporters that he has seen white colleagues develop more empathy about how the Confederate symbol is painful to him and other African Americans.

“They began to understand and feel the same thing that I've been feeling for 61 years of my life,'' Johnson said.

Sen. Chad McMahan, R-Guntown, acknowledged he’d had a recent change on the flag. Like many, McMahan said he grew up in the 1980s with a somewhat innocuous understanding of the Confederate flag.

“When I look at that Confederate flag, I must confess that I think of ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ and my first love, Daisy Duke,” McMahan said on the Senate floor.

A conversation with Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann over Oreos convinced him to change his mind. “I’m a Republican. Personally, I’m not going to support a Democrat battle flag,” McMahan said.

A commission will design a new flag that cannot include the Confederate symbol and that must have the words “In God We Trust.” 

Voters will be asked to approve the new design in the Nov. 3 election. If they reject it, the commission will set a different design using the same guidelines, and that would be sent to voters later.

Republican House Speaker Philip Gunn has pushed for five years to change the flag, saying the Confederate symbol is offensive and ought to be changed out of Christian love for others who have been hurt.

“How sweet it is to celebrate this on the Lord’s day,” Gunn said.

Legislators put the Confederate emblem on the upper left corner of Mississippi flag in 1894, as white people were squelching political power that African Americans had gained after the Civil War. The law establishing the flag had a 1906 sunset and it was never renewed until Democrats put it on the ballot in 2001.

In a 2001 statewide election, — arrange by a Democrat-led Legislature and Democrat Gov. Ronnie Musgrove — voters chose to keep the flag in a very divisive vote.

An increasing number of cities and all Mississippi's public universities have taken down the state flag in recent years. But until now, efforts to redesign the flag sputtered in the Republican-dominated Legislature.

That dynamic shifted as an extraordinary and diverse coalition of political, business, religious groups and sports leaders pushed for change.

At a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Mississippi Governor's Mansion in early June, thousands cheered as an organizer said the state needs to divorce itself from all Confederate symbols.

Religious groups said erasing the rebel emblem from the state flag is a moral imperative. Notable among them was the state's largest church group, the 500,000-member Mississippi Baptist Convention, which called for change last week after not pushing for it before the 2001 election.

Business groups said the banner hinders economic development in one of the poorest states in the nation.

In a sports-crazy culture, the biggest blow might have happened when college sports leagues said Mississippi could lose postseason events if it continued flying the Confederate-themed flag. Nearly four dozen of Mississippi's university athletic directors and coaches came to the Capitol to lobby for change.

Many people who wanted to keep the emblem on the Mississippi flag said they see it as a symbol of heritage.

The battle emblem is a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have waved the rebel flag for decades.

The Mississippi Supreme Court found in 2000 that when the state updated its laws in 1906, portions dealing with the flag were not included. That meant the banner lacked official status. Musgrove in 2000 appointed a commission to decide the flag’s future. It held hearings across the state that grew ugly as people shouted at each other about the flag.

Legislators then opted not to set a flag design themselves, and put the issue on the 2001 statewide ballot.

Former Mississippi Gov. William Winter, who is now 97, served on then-President Bill Clinton's national advisory board on race in the 1990s and was chairman of the Mississippi flag commission in 2000. Winter said Sunday that removing the Confederate symbol from the banner is “long overdue.”

“The battle for a better Mississippi does not end with the removal of the flag, and we should work in concert to make other positive changes in the interest of all of our people,” said Winter, a Democrat who was governor from 1980 until 1984.

Democratic state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville, who is African American, said the state deserves a flag to make all people proud.

“Today is a history-making day in the state of Mississippi,'' Simmons told colleagues. “Let’s vote today for the Mississippi of tomorrow.”

On Friday, just one day before the House and Senate voted to suspend the rules, a full-page advertisement bearing the signatures of more than 100 CEOs of Mississippi companies also ran in the Clarion Ledger advocating for change.

Opponents of the measure argued that the issue should have been put to a referendum vote, as it was in 2001 when Mississippians voted overwhelmingly to keep the 1894 flag.

Many of those opponents voiced support for an amendment that would have put the issue on the ballot during the municipal elections in spring of 2021. The amendment would have presented voters with four choices, one of which would have been the 1894 flag with the Confederate emblem.