Mississippi keeps its symbol of hate for now

This past Tuesday was the deadline for the Mississippi state legislature to decide what it was going to do with its state flag. To be exact, it was the deadline to decide on numerous bills that altered the original design in some ways or adopted a completely new design, instead of the symbol of the Confederacy that is Mississippi’s state flag. Since no agreement was reached on any of the bills, the flag stays as is for now.

Last week, one of the proposed solutions to the “flag flap” was for the state to have two flags. One would have the symbol of the Confederacy and the other would have the state tree, a Magnolia. Mississippi House of Representatives Speaker Pro Tempore Greg Snowden proposed that the two flags have “equal status.” 

”Separate but equal.” Hmmm … Guess Rep. Snowden missed the memo on that.

The fact that the Mississippi State Legislature was juggling more than 10 proposed bills dealing with the flag shows how contentious the issue is. City and state governments across the South have been sparring over what to do with symbols of the Confederacy in the aftermath of the Emanuel AME Church massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, last summer. That’s when a white supremacist who identified with the Confederacy and possessed Confederate memorabilia murdered nine unarmed African Americans in the church.