Black Mississippians Paved The Way For State Flag Change A Year Ago Today
For 126 years, a banner based upon the Confederacy’s first national flag and the Confederate battle flag waved atop poles and government buildings, reminding residents of the Blackest state in the nation that white supremacy still ruled in Mississippi. That changed one year ago today when years of work paid off for the Black Mississippians who led the effort to retire the 1894 Mississippi State Flag.
“I feel good,” Sen. Hillman Frazier (D), a Black lawmaker from Jackson who worked on the flag issue for decades, told the Mississippi Free Press on the anniversary of the Legislature’s historic vote to take the old flag down.
That would not have happened, he said, if not for the COVID-19 pandemic, which cut the spring 2020 legislative session short. After early spring lockdowns, lawmakers in the mostly white, Republican-led Mississippi House and Senate reconvened over the late spring and summer months.
“COVID gave us more time to talk about the issues and have heart-to-heart discussions. So I had time to talk to my colleagues one-on-one. That was important. … Had it been a regular session, it wouldn’t have passed because we wouldn’t have time to get around to talking to our colleagues,” Frazier said.
Read more: https://www.mississippifreepress.org/13375/black-mississippians-paved-the-way-for-state-flag-change-a-year-ago-today/