In Mississippi, defenders of state’s Confederate-themed flag dig in
By Neely Tucker
August 18 at 9:43 PM
... The state’s two U.S. senators, both Republicans, said the flag should go. A Mississippi-born leader of the Southern Baptist Convention, the bedrock faith of many of the state’s conservatives, wrote, “Let’s take down that flag.”
The powerful speaker of the State House of Representatives, Philip Gunn, became a national story when he said his Christian belief dictated that the flag “needs to be removed.” A handful of towns started removing it from city quarters. Even the Ole Miss football coach, whose team is named “the Rebels” for the Confederate troops of yore, said the flag should bite the dust ...
This is a common sentiment in white Mississippi — that the Confederate battle flag is a historic banner that embodies the noble service and sacrifice of men who fought for “states’ rights.”
The other side of states’ rights in Mississippi evokes the Black Codes, the Mississippi Plan, the pig law, prison farms, poll taxes, Jim Crow segregation and the killings of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers and the three civil rights workers. Mississippi’s Confederate veterans won the battle for white supremacy, built monuments to themselves in nearly every town and set in place a system of oppression that would last until the civil rights movement finally knocked it away ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/mississippi-resists-calls-to-change-its-confederate-themed-flag/2015/08/18/cd590924-41d3-11e5-846d-02792f854297_story.html
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