Ole Miss Takes Down State Flag Featuring Confederate Emblem

University of Mississippi Interim-Chancellor Morris Stocks ordered the flag to be taken and sent to the university’s archives. Governor Phil Bryant said he would consider legislative action to remove the emblem from the flag, but would prefer a voter referendum to approve the change. Two Klan members were later arrested on weapons charges by campus police after protesting Thursday’s faculty senate vote against the flag. Residents made a decision to keep the flag during a statewide vote in 2001. “It clearly states ‘The state flag shall receive all the respect and ceremonious etiquette given the American flag, ‘” Bryant said. Now the University of Kansas provost, Vitter is likely to be hired Thursday by Mississippi’s College Board if on-campus interviews go well.

“This flag is not just a few piece of cloth that bears no importance; it is the physical manifestation of a time of hate, oppression and slavery that split this country at its seams”, Thompson told the Associated Press in June. The image in question was a battle flag and not the Confederacy’s national flag.

He urged state leaders to create a new flag for Mississippi.

For decades, the school has been at the heart of the clash between modern civil rights and the South’s relentless grip on Confederate nostalgia. The Mississippi flag has had the emblem – a blue X with 13 white stars over a field of red – in the upper left corner since 1894.

The University Police Department lowered the last remaining state flag flying on campus in a ceremony early Monday morning. He found those students and convinced them to put away their flag because nothing good could come of insisting that after a hundred years, our state had done nothing to move past the racial injustices for which it had become so famous.

The University of Mississippi’s history is intertwined with the symbolism of the Old South. Its nickname – Ole Miss – is a reference to the name slaves often used to refer to the wife of plantation owners.

Stocks said the decision to take down the flag was hard, since to a few the meaning of the symbol is their heritage, with many supporters of the flag saying it honors their Confederate veteran ancestors. The University is not in rebellion, but students are expressing the need to remove Confederate symbols from its grounds. One student added that perhaps the state Legislature should follow suit.

“I think that it is an wonderful thing to happen to us today”, said Ole Miss NAACP Vice-President Tysianna Marino.