Mississippi Legislature Moves To Remove Confederate Emblem From Flag, Governor Said He’d Sign Bill If It Passes

Mississippi is close to removing a confederate emblem from its state flag after a bipartisan resolution by almost a dozen lawmakers to change the design passed through the State Senate Saturday by a 36-14 vote.

On Saturday, Gov. Tate Reeves (R-MS) said the legislature had been “deadlocked” on the issue but he was seeing progress.

“The argument over the 1894 flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it’s time to end it,” he continued. “If they send me a bill this weekend, I will sign it,” Reeves wrote on Facebook.

Reeves also wrote that any vote regarding the flag would not be the end of their work, that their real job was “to bring the state together,” a task he described as “harder than recovering from tornadoes, harder than historic floods, harder than agency corruption, or prison riots or the coming hurricane season—even harder than battling the Coronavirus.”

Over the last few weeks, several confederate statues have been defaced and torn down following nationwide

protests against police brutality and racism. Debate around removal of confederate flags have come to light after NASCAR announced it would ban them from their race tracks following the proposal on CNN from Bubba Wallace, the league’s only Black racer.

Mississippi’s current flag was adopted in 1894 — nearly thirty years after the Civil War had ended — and is the only state flag to show the emblem of the Confederate states.

The Mississippi House had already voted 84-35 in support of the resolution, so now with the Senate’s decision Saturday, both chambers will move forward with an official vote on replacing the state flag.