Senator Calls For Return of Old Mississippi Flag: ‘Our People Died Under That Flag’

Almost three years after both houses of the Mississippi Legislature overwhelmingly voted to retire the old Confederate-themed state flag, a state senator from Union County is calling for its return.

“That flag, a lot of our people fought and died under that flag,” Sen. Kathy Chism, R-New Albany, said during a political speech at the Belmont Political Rally in Tishomingo County on June 3. A reader shared a link to a video of her speech with the Mississippi Free Press.

The state did not adopt the flag—which featured three red, white and blue bars with a Confederate cross in the upper left-hand corner—until 1894, almost three decades after the end of the Civil War and several years after the end of Reconstruction. White supremacist lawmakers adopted the Confederate-themed flag in place of a prior magnolia flag as they worked to lock Black Mississippians out of politics with a slew of Jim Crow laws.

Following decades of efforts by Black lawmakers and Black activists, the Mississippi Legislature’s white Republican leaders finally agreed to vote on legislation to change the state flag on June 28, 2020. Chism was just one of 14 senators, all Republicans, who voted against retiring the old flag out of the 52-member body.