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‘This could serve as a source of empowerment for African Americans’

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AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
The magnolia centered banner chosen Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2020 by the Mississippi State Flag Commission flies outside the Old State Capitol Museum in downtown Jackson, Miss. The nine member committee voted to recommend a design with the state flower.

On Election Day, Mississippi became the final state to dissociate from the Confederate emblem, an enduring symbol of slavery in the southern United States. More than 70 percent of Mississippi voters approved a new state flag, which features a magnolia flower surrounded by stars. 

“I am not shocked, but I am surprised,” says Patricia Davis, an associate professor at Northeastern who studies public memory, identity, race, gender, and representation. “There’s a pretty long history of efforts to get rid of that Confederate symbol in the Mississippi flag that have been unsuccessful over time, including several years ago, when the people voted to keep the flag intact.”

Other Southern states have severed ties in recent years with the Civil War emblem. But the battles over Confederate symbols have remained contentious: A 2017 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which resulted in the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was incited by white supremacists who were protesting plans to take down a Confederate statue.

The most recent Mississippi flag was created in 1894, when the state was promoting Jim Crow laws to disenfranchise Black citizens. The Civil War and its aftermath yielded multiple versions of the Confederate emblem across the South, says Davis. 

“That one [in Mississippi] is actually known as the Confederate battle flag,” Davis says. “It has been taken up by racists—the KKK and other anti-Black and white-supremacist groups—as a means of suggesting to African Americans that you are not real citizens, you are not real human beings. Most people have some idea of the violent history behind these groups, and how they have operated to keep the African American community terrorized through violence.”

Continue reading at News@Northeastern.

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