JACKSON — Republican Gov. Phil Bryant said Thursday that he will not call Mississippi lawmakers back to the Capitol for an election-year special session to consider removing a Confederate battle emblem from the state flag.
“As has been my longstanding practice, I will not call a special legislative session for something other than a natural disaster or a major economic development project,” the governor said.
Mississippi has the only state flag in the nation that still includes the Confederate symbol — a blue X with 13 stars, over a red field.
The state has had the same flag since Reconstruction, but Old South symbols are coming under new scrutiny since last week’s massacre of nine black worshippers at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The 21-year-old man charged in the killings, Dylann Storm Roof, had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos posted online before the attack.
South Carolina lawmakers will consider whether to remove a freestanding Confederate battle flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia. Alabama’s governor, by executive order, removed four secessionist flags from a Capitol monument in Montgomery and compared the Confederate battle emblem to the swastika used by Nazi Germany.
The emblem has divided Mississippi’s elected leaders.
Republican Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, Democratic state Attorney General Jim Hood and both of the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran, said this week that the state should change its flag to a design that would unify people.
But Bryant and Republican Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves said they respect the results of the 2001 election in which voters decided by a nearly 2-to-1 margin to keep the flag. They said if the issue is revisited, it should be decided by voters.
The head of the Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus, Democratic Sen. Kenny Wayne Jones of Canton, said Thursday that he wants Bryant to call a special session to bring “true dialogue and full resolution” on redesigning a state flag that many see as racially divisive. Legislators’ next regular session begins in January — after the party primaries in August and the general election in November, when the governor, seven other statewide officials and all 174 legislative seats will be decided.
“It is a travesty to continue to wave the present state flag, with its obvious divisive and violent connotations that resonate hatred in every headline across the nation; yet still defines our great state,” Jones said.
An alternative on the 2001 ballot proposed replacing the Confederate symbol with a blue canton corner that had circles of 20 white stars to represent Mississippi’s status as the 20th state in the union. Greg Stewart of Gulfport, a longtime member of Sons of Confederate Veterans, criticized the alternative as a “pizza flag” that lacked historical authenticity.
As a current alternative to the state flag, some businesses in Mississippi have already started to fly a banner that the state used briefly in 1861. Commonly called the magnolia flag, its center has a magnolia tree, a symbol of the state. The upper left corner has a blue rectangle with a single white star — the “bonnie blue flag” that represented the Republic of West Florida, which in 1810 included parts of the current south Mississippi. After Mississippi seceded from the union in 1861, it flew the bonnie blue flag as a sign of independence before it adopted the magnolia flag.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 43 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.