The Ole Miss Campus Will No Longer Fly The Mississippi State Flag

It will be placed in the university’s archives, along with the resolutions surrounding the flag’s removal.

“I think the overall mood has changed”, Bruce says.

Amid the controversy surrounding the state flag, there have been questions as to whether state law requires institutions of higher learning to fly the flag.

Bryant’s office did not release a follow-up statement on Monday before press time.

On Tuesday, 33 senators in Ole Miss’s student government outvoted 15 of their peers to pass a measure that favors the removal of the state flag-which includes a version of the Confederate flag in its design-from school grounds. Shortly after, as students started to disperse, members of an organization known as the Mississippi League of the South marched to the circle, and then to Fulton Chapel and led a counter protest to let African American students know that black lives do not matter. That’s where deadly white riots broke out in 1962, when James Meredith was enrolled as the university’s first black student, under a federal court order and with protection from a phalanx of USA marshals. The university’s old mascot was a bearded plantation owner called Colonel Rebel.

Officials acted after students last week voted to remove the flag, saying the confederate symbol had no place at the campus. This is one small step in the structure change we want to see at the University.

“As Mississippi’s flagship university, we have a deep love and respect for our state”.

The City Council in the state capital, Jackson, which hasn’t flown the state flag on city property in more than a decade, voted in July to urge the state to create a new flag, CNN affiliate WAPT reported.

Head football Coach Hugh Freeze commented on the University of Mississippi removing the state flag from the official flag pole on campus.

After the battle flag gained popularity among the Confederates, it was featured on later versions of the rebel states’ national flag. A Change.org petition to keep the flag had nearly 1,800 signatures at noon on Monday.

Despite this, Confederate symbolism remains in state flags in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, and Florida.

“We will not stop organizing until we have secured for ourselves and our future students a safe space where one can grow intellectually, and not feel uncomfortable navigating in an oppressive environment with such a blatant symbol of hate, said Okoye”.

“We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us”, Gunn, a leader in his local Baptist church, said in a statement.

While it also proved that this flag is a symbol of Mississippi’s defiance to progress, my hope is that it speeds up the process and that the administration makes the right decision.

The state flag has been a sticky topic during this election year in Mississippi, with the governor and most lawmakers seeking re-election November. 3.

Lee further wrote, “As interim Chancellor Stocks has said, ‘Our state needs a flag that speaks to who we are”.