Mississippi House speaker: Flag 'has become a point of offense'

A top Mississippi Republican lawmaker has called on the Confederate battle flag emblem to be removed from the state’s flag.

Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn took a stand against the rebel flag imagery on Monday, the first time a state Republican has called for its removal, according to a report from the Clarion-Ledger.


“We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us,” Gunn said in a statement. “As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi’s flag.”

But even after the groundswell of support for removing the rebel flag from South Carolina’s statehouse grounds after the mass shooting in Charleston, there has still been resistance among prominent Mississippians.

Republican Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said on Monday the flag should remain as it is.

“A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state’s flag, and I don’t believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue,” Bryant said in a statement.

In Washington, Mississippi’s senior U.S. senator, Republican Thad Cochran, told POLITICO on Monday, “the issue is up to and in the hands of the state Legislature.”

“I’m not going to get into the discussion of whether one or more different emblems, flags, ornaments, decorations, are on the state Capitol. That’s up to the state Legislature,” Cochran added.

And former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday that he has no problem with his state’s flag.

“I am not offended at all by our flag, or the Confederate flag for that matter,” Barbour said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” adding that it should be up to current leaders at all levels of government to lead on the issue.

Pressed on whether his position is a cop-out, Barbour disagreed, noting that under his leadership, Mississippi became the only state in the U.S. to use taxpayers’ money to build a civil rights museum.

The flag was first adopted by the Mississippi Legislature in 1894, and it became the state’s official flag in 2001. At that time, voters rejected a referendum that would have replaced the blue saltire and red field with a blue canton containing 20 stars. The state Supreme Court had ruled in 2000 that the state Legislature had in 1906 repealed the flag’s 1894 adoption.

“That’s going to be talked about again, and the decision belongs, rightly, with the people of Mississippi,” Barbour said.

Officials in Mississippi and Tennessee are debating over whether to keep the references to the states’ Confederate past, while South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has called on the removal of battle flag that stands in front of that state’s Capitol building.

In Tennessee, Democratic and Republican leaders want to remove the bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general during the Civil War and an early member of the Ku Klux Klan, reports The Associated Press.

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.

This article tagged under: Republicans

Mississippi

Confederate Flag