Mississippi lawyer Carlos Moore has employed security protection and reported online threats to FBI and police but vows to forge ahead: ‘We are not afraid’

The black civil rights lawyer who has filed a federal lawsuit to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag has been forced to employ security protection after receiving a spate of death threats through social media.

Carlos Moore, 39, an attorney from Grenada, Mississippi, has reported several threats to the FBI and local police after he was showered with vitriol following the lodging of his lawsuit on 29 February. In the most blatant verbal attack, a Facebook user purportedly from Corinth, Mississippi, who displays a handgun as his profile picture, posted: “Ok somebody shot [sic] this P.O.S before he infects us all!”

Another Facebook member, apparently from a county abutting Moore’s, posted: “He’s black, they hate white folk – storms happen, lightning strikes, buildings burn.”

Then on Tuesday night a construction worker purportedly from Dallas invoked the assassin of Martin Luther King: “To all the people in Mississippi, Carlos Moore is trying to change your state flag. He is black and think a lot of other things mixed in too… If any of my bro’s out that way need my help to keep your flag the way it is I’m right here. Where is James Earl Ray when you need him.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lawyer Carlos Moore in his office in Grenada, Mississippi Photograph: Joe Worthem/The Guardian

Moore filed his complaint in a federal district court in Jackson. It calls on judge Carlton Reeves to order the Republican governor of Mississippi, Phil Bryant, to remove the current flag from the state capital and all other state offices and grounds.

The flag, adopted in 1894, is the only state flag that still incorporates the Confederate battle emblem – a red square traversed by a blue cross dotted with 13 white stars, known as the Southern Cross. The stars represent the 11 states that formed the pro-slavery confederacy in the US civil war plus Kentucky and Missouri.

The lawsuit argues that including the emblem in the Mississippi state flag is tantamount to “hateful government speech”. It says the flag incites racial violence on the part of Mississippians, and is a violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment of the US constitution.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A state flag of Mississippi is unfurled by Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups on the grounds of the state capitol in Jackson. Photograph: Rogelio V Solis/AP

Moore said that he was inspired to press the lawsuit because “my daughter is five years old and I don’t want her growing up in this racist bigoted environment that is supported by the state. I want her to live in a state that has a unifying flag that does not promote racial violence or subject its African American citizens to second-class status.”

The lawyer said he was also moved to issue the complaint as a riposte to the controversial announcement by Bryant that he was making April “Confederate heritage month” in Mississippi. To add insult to injury, the governor made his proclamation in February, which is Black History Month.

Previous attempts to have Confederate flags removed from other southern states such as Alabama and Georgia have failed in federal courts because judges were unconvinced that the emblem actively incites racial violence. In his lawsuit, Moore has pointed to a number of recent incidents that he argues do provide such evidence.

Last June nine churchgoers were gunned down in Charleston, South Carolina, by a suspected shooter who professed allegiance to the confederacy. In the wake of the tragedy, South Carolina and Alabama removed the Confederate flag from state grounds.

The lawsuit also points to an incident last November in which a supporter of the Mississippi flag incensed by Walmart’s decision to stop selling the Confederate battle flag exploded a bomb outside a branch of the retail store in Tupelo.

Ironically, Moore will now be able to cite the death threats he has received over the past week as further evidence of the caustic influence of the Confederate battle flag. But he said he would not be deterred by the intimidation.

“We are not afraid. We are going forward with this lawsuit. We believe we have right on our side and victory is ahead – this movement cannot be stopped,” he said.

Moore added: “The mantle has been passed down to us from Dr King, Medgar Evers, Thurgood Marshall. We are going to take that mantle and lead the people of Mississippi to the promised land – that flag will come down after 122 years, I am certain of it.”