A New State Flag for Mississippi’s Third Century
By Mark Wiggs
Wednesday, December 16, 2015 12:29 p.m. CST
Mississippi celebrates the bicentennial of its statehood in 2017, marking the anniversary of its admission to the Union as the 20th state on Dec. 10, 1817. A centerpiece of the state's bicentennial celebration will be the 2017 opening of two new museums standing side-by-side on North Street: the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, the nation's first state-sponsored civil rights museum, and the Museum of Mississippi History ...
As this bicentennial approaches, however, Mississippi is the only state that still has the Confederate battle flag as part of its official state flag. If the flag flying in front of these new museums features the Confederate battle emblem, it will say that Mississippi is still mired in its racist past while refusing to acknowledge it. It will represent ongoing willful denial that —as Mississippi's 1861 Declaration of Secession proves—Mississippi seceded from the Union to maintain the continued enslavement of African Americans, bringing on the devastating war that followed.
Failure to change Mississippi's flag will signify that Mississippi continues to ignore that the introduction of the current flag in 1894 was a contemporaneous and integral part of this state's enactment of Jim Crow laws segregating its black citizens and denying them basic constitutional protections.
Failure to change Mississippi's flag will demonstrate that Mississippi willfully embraces this emblem that was used—officially and unofficially—throughout the civil-rights era of the 1950s and 1960s and beyond as a powerful symbol of opposition and often violent resistance to desegregation of public schools, protection of voting rights and equal treatment in public accommodations ...
http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2015/dec/16/new-state-flag-mississippis-third-century/
