Consigned to history: Mississippi state flag with Confederate symbol is removed from its position outside State Capitol building in Jackson and sent to a museum after it was stripped of official status
Mississippi's state flag has been retired and brought to a museum after Republican Governor Tate Reeves signed a law stripping its official status.
During a ceremony outside the Mississippi State Capitol building in Jackson on Wednesday the flag was taken down for the final time.
Gov. Reeves signed the historic bill Tuesday at the Governor's Mansion, immediately removing official status for the 126-year-old banner that has been a source of division for generations.
The new law required a ceremony for the 'prompt, dignified and respectful removal' of the banner, which was held yesterday.
Three flags flying at the Capitol were lowered as dozens of people watched on the lawn or from open windows inside the building.
During a ceremony outside the Mississippi State Capitol building in Jackson on Wednesday the flag was taken down for the final time and brought to a museum
Those watching on applauded after honor guard members from the National Guard and the Mississippi Highway Patrol folded the flag and presented it to officials
Many applauded after honor guard members from the National Guard and the Mississippi Highway Patrol presented them to House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and state Department of Archives and History director Katie Blount.
Three flags flying at the Capitol were lowered as dozens of people watched on the lawn or from open windows inside the building
Police cars with flashing blue lights escorted a vehicle that took the officials, and the flags, to the nearby Museum of Mississippi History.
The museum will put one flag in an exhibit and two into archives.
One person watching with pride was Robert Clark, a former lawmaker whose grandfather was a slave.
Mr Clark became the first African American since Reconstruction to win a seat in the Mississippi Legislature in 1967.
He rose to the second-highest leadership spot during his 36 years in the House.
For decades he tried to persuade colleagues that Mississippi should change the flag, which has been used by some as a symbol of white supremacy.
Now 91, Mr Clark said he thought about his grandfather, who was forced to go barefoot and eat from a trough before being released from slavery at age 11, as he watched the flag being lowered.
'That's why I fought to get the flag changed - because the flag represented that, so far as I was concerned,' Clark said after the ceremony.
Mississippi faced increasing pressure in recent weeks to change its flag since protests against racial injustice focused attention on Confederate symbols.
'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 on live TV just before the signing of the bill to remove the flag.
Police cars with flashing blue lights escorted a vehicle that took House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and state Department of Archives and History director Katie Blount, and the flags, to the nearby Museum of Mississippi History
Mississippi Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signs the bill retiring the last state flag in the United States with the Confederate battle emblem, at the Governor's Mansion in Jackson Tuesday
The new law required a ceremony for the 'prompt, dignified and respectful removal' of the banner, which was held yesterday
Mississippi faced increasing pressure in recent weeks to change its flag since protests against racial injustice focused attention on Confederate symbols
One person watching with pride was Robert Clark, a former lawmaker whose grandfather was a slave. Mr Clark became the first African American since Reconstruction to win a seat in the Mississippi Legislature in 1967
A crowd gathered at the bottom of the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol building in Jackson during the official ceremony
'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.'
The new flag's design cannot include the Confederate symbol and must have the words 'In God We Trust.'
Voters will be asked to approve the design in the November 3 election. If they reject it, the commission will draft a different design using the same guidelines, to be sent to voters later.
A broad coalition of legislators on Sunday passed the landmark legislation to change the flag, capping a weekend of emotional debate and decades of effort by Black lawmakers and others who see the rebel emblem as a symbol of hatred
A broad coalition of legislators on Sunday passed the landmark legislation to retire the flag, capping a weekend of emotional debate and decades of effort by Black lawmakers and others who see the rebel emblem as a symbol of hatred.
'We have much to be proud of and much to reckon with,' said Gunn, who has advocated changing the flag the past five years.
'This flag has flown over our best and our worst. Some flew it over their bravery to defend their homeland. And for others, it's been a shadow over their struggle to be free.'
The Confederate battle emblem has a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars.
Legislators put it on the upper-left corner of the Mississippi flag in 1894, as white people were squelching the political power African Americans had gained after the Civil War.
Critics have said for generations that it's wrong for a state where 38 per cent of the people are black to have a flag marked by the Confederacy.
The Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups have used the symbol to promote racist agendas.
Mississippi voters chose to keep the flag in a 2001 statewide election, with supporters saying they saw it as a symbol of Southern heritage.
Since then, a growing number of cities and all the state's public universities have abandoned it.
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is pictured signing the bill at the Governor's Mansion in Jackson
The flag issue was still broadly considered too volatile for legislators to touch, until the police custody death of an African American man in Minneapolis, George Floyd.
His death set off weeks of sustained protests against racial injustice, followed by calls to take down Confederate symbols.
A groundswell of young activists, college athletes and leaders from business, religion, education and sports called on Mississippi to make the change, finally providing the momentum for legislators to vote.
Among the small group of dignitaries witnessing the bill signing were Reuben Anderson, who was the first African American justice on the Mississippi Supreme Court, serving from 1985 to 1991; Willie Simmons, a current state Transportation Commissioner who is the first African American elected to that job; and Reena Evers-Everette, daughter of civil rights icons Medgar and Myrlie Evers.
Medgar Evers, a Mississippi NAACP leader, was assassinated in the family's driveway in 1963. Myrlie Evers was national chairwoman of the NAACP in the mid-1990s and is still living.
Before the bill signing Tuesday, state employees raised and lowered several of the flags on a pole outside the Capitol. The secretary of state's office sells flags for $20 each, and a spokeswoman said there has been a recent increase in requests
Gov. Tate Reeves speaks with Reena Evers, daughter of the slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers and Myrlie Evers, after signing the bill
'That Confederate symbol is not who Mississippi is now. It's not what it was in 1894, either, inclusive of all Mississippians,' Evers-Everette said after the ceremony. 'But now we´re going to a place of total inclusion and unity with our hearts along with our thoughts and in our actions.'
Reeves used several pens to sign the bill. As he completed the process, a cheer could be heard from people outside the Governor's Mansion who were watching the livestream broadcast on their phones. Reeves handed the pens to lawmakers and others who had worked on the issue.
After a white gunman who had posed with the Confederate flag killed black worshipers at a South Carolina church in 2015, Mississippi's Republican speaker of the House, Philip Gunn, said his religious faith compelled him to say that Mississippi must purge the symbol from its flag.
Consigned to history: Mississippi state flag with Confederate symbol is removed from its position outside State Capitol building in Jackson and sent to a museum after it was stripped of official status
![Consigned to history: Mississippi state flag with Confederate symbol is removed from its position outside State Capitol building in Jackson and sent to a museum after it was stripped of official status]()
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July 03, 2020
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