The Mississippi State Capitol dome is visible in the distance as the Mississippi State Flag flies nearby in Jackson, MS, on January 10, 2019.
Brandon Dill | The Washington Post | fake pictures
Mississippi lawmakers voted on Sunday to hand over the emblem of the Confederate battle for the state flag more than a century after white supremacy lawmakers adopted the design a generation after the South lost the Civil War.
Spectators on Capitol Hill cheered and applauded after votes in the House and Senate.
Each chamber had broad bipartisan support for the historic decision. Republican Governor Tate Reeves has said he will sign the bill and that the state flag will lose its official status as soon as it does. That could happen in the coming days.
Mississippi has faced mounting pressure to change its flag in the past month amid international protests against racial injustice in the United States.
After the vote, lawmakers embraced. Even those on the opposite side of the issue also hugged when an emotional day of debate came to an end.
A commission is to 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 establish a different design using the same guidelines, and that would be sent to voters later.
Mississippi has a black population of 38%, and the latest state flag incorporating the emblem that is widely considered racist.
Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Philip Gunn, who is white, has lobbied for five years to change the flag, saying the Confederate symbol is offensive. The House passed bill 91-23 on Sunday afternoon. Within hours, the Senate did the same, 37-14.
“How sweet it is to celebrate this on the Lord’s day,” said Gunn. “Many prayed to him to bring us to this day. He has responded.”
The flag change has already been debated, and in recent years an increasing number of cities and all the state’s public universities have eliminated it on their own. But the issue never garnered enough support in either the Republican-dominated conservative legislature or recent governors.
That dynamic changed in a matter of weeks when an extraordinary and diverse coalition of political, business, religious and sports leaders lobbied to change the flag.
At a Black Lives Matter protest outside the Mississippi Governor’s Mansion in early June, thousands cheered when an organizer said the state needs to divorce all Confederate symbols.
Religious groups, including the large and influential Mississippi Baptist Convention, said deleting the rebel emblem from the state flag is a moral imperative.
Business groups said the banner hinders economic development in one of the nation’s poorest states.
In a sports-crazy culture, the biggest blow could have occurred when college sports leagues said Mississippi could lose postseason events if it continued to fly the Confederate themed flag. Nearly four dozen directors and athletic trainers from the University of Mississippi came to the Capitol to press for change.
Many people who wanted to keep the emblem on the Mississippi flag said they see it as a symbol of heritage.
Lawmakers put the Confederate emblem in the upper left corner of the Mississippi flag in 1894, as whites crushed the political power that African Americans gained after the Civil War.
The emblem of battle 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. Georgia prominently displayed the battle emblem on its state flag in 1956, during a backlash to the civil rights movement. That state removed the symbol from its banner in 2001.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that when the state updated its laws in 1906, portions related to the flag were not included. That meant that the banner lacked official status. Democratic Governor Ronnie Musgrove in 2000 appointed a commission to decide the flag’s future. He held hearings across the state that got ugly as people yelled at each other over the flag.
After that, lawmakers chose not to establish a flag design themselves. They put the issue on a 2001 state ballot, and people voted to keep the flag. An alternative proposal would have replaced the Confederate corner with a blue field topped by a group of white stars representing Mississippi as the twentieth state.
African-American Democratic State Senator Derrick Simmons of Greenville said the state deserves a flag that makes everyone proud.
“Today is a historic day in the state of Mississippi,” Simmons told colleagues. “Let’s vote today for the Mississippi of tomorrow.”
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