This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Lawmakers in Mississippi plan to propose legislation to remove the Confederate emblem from the state flag, as momentum grows across the south for symbols that evoke the era of slavery to be removed from public view.

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The flag is under fresh scrutiny in the wake of the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on 17 June. Nine churchgoers were killed.

Photographs of the suspect, Dylann Roof, show him holding a Confederate flag. Many African Americans consider it to be a symbol of racial hatred. The South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, on Monday called for the flag to be removed from the statehouse grounds.

Kenny Jones, a Mississippi state senator, said he and others would consider pre-filing a bill to change the flag in order to gauge support ahead of the next legislative session, which starts in January.

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Mississippi is the only state that has the Confederate battle saltire in its flag, though six others have designs that allude to the group of secessionist states that fought unsuccessfully to leave the United States in the civil war of 1861-65. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe indicated on Tuesday he would move to have the flag banished from state license plates.

Mississippi has used the design since 1894 and held a referendum in 2001 in which two-thirds voted in favour of keeping it.

“I think it’s time for the whole south, with all the progressive individuals that we have, to start having a dialogue where we put out the right message that goes out to the rest of the nation,” said Jones, a Democrat who is chairman of the state’s legislative black caucus.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest South Carolina governor calls for Confederate flag’s removal.

“It goes back to everything stereotypical that people have seen over the years when it comes to the south. I just think it’s time to change it … It’s an insult, it’s very offensive to all African Americans everywhere,” he said.

“We are definitely going to be looking at legislation, to put it back on the table just so we can get the dialogue started in a respectful manner so we can talk about what’s best, especially for Mississippi.

“We can pre-file a bill to see what kind of support we get. The caucus will be jumping on this relatively quickly, because I’m quite sure this will be one of our main objectives when we get back in 2016.”

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Philip Gunn, the Republican speaker of the house, also called for the flag to be redesigned. “We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us. As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offence that needs to be removed.

“We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi’s flag,” he said.

However, Phil Bryant, the state’s Republican governor, said the referendum had produced a definitive result that should not be challenged. “I don’t believe the Mississippi legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue,” he said.

An online petition to change the flag had gathered more than 7,000 signatures by Monday night. The petition’s creator, Jennifer Gunter, said she started it after last week’s murders. “I am encouraged, but I do know that the problem is bigger than a flag. But I think it would be a very good gesture of unity in the wake of the tragedy,” she said.

Gunter is a Mississippi native and a PhD student at the University of South Carolina. “I think the knowledge is starting to spread that that symbol has been co-opted by hate groups around the world and I’m hopeful that the citizens of Mississippi would want to disassociate themselves from such a symbol,” she said.

“It would remove one more symbol of the inequity that exists,” said Frank Figgers, vice-president of the Veterans of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement group.

Flags are not the only point of contention. In Tennessee, a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a confederate general and first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is on display in the statehouse.

“Symbols of hate shouldn’t be promoted by government. SC should remove the Confederate battle flag from its capitol, and Tennessee should remove the bust of Forrest inside our capitol,” Jim Cooper, a US congressman from Tennessee, said on Twitter.

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Students at the University of Texas at Austin have demanded the removal of a statue on campus honouring Jefferson Davis, the Confederate president. A spokesman said the university’s president, Gregory Fenves, met students on Monday afternoon to discuss the matter.

“The student and university leaders will work collaboratively to continue gathering all of the information and perspectives needed to make a decision about the statue,” the spokesman said.

Last week, the US supreme court ruled that Texas did not have to comply with a request from a group called the Sons of Confederate Veterans to produce speciality car licence plates that feature a Confederate flag design.

Last year, though, Georgia did just that, angering civil rights activists. On Monday, the Georgia NAACP president, Francys Johnson, said the flag should be “retired to museums and history books”.

Georgia’s state flag was dominated by a Confederate battle symbol from 1956 to 2001.