Authors Want Mississippi to Change Its Flag

Author John Grisham, actor Morgan Freeman, legendary quarterback Archie Manning, former Netscape chief executive Jim Barksdale and music legend Jimmy Buffett all signed the letter, which argued that it was “time for Mississippi to fly a flag for all its people. I think it’s time we move in a different direction with the state flag”.

To get a vote about the flag on the ballot, somebody would have to register an initiative with the state.

But even though it’s a decade and a half later, and even though the Confederate battle emblem has been removed elsewhere recently, it appears unlikely that Mississippi will remove the symbol from its flag soon.

In a Clarion-Ledger survey, 64 Mississippi lawmakers said they support a redesign, 24 opposed it, nine were undecided and 96 would not answer. Freeze’s comments came as South Carolina grappled with removing the Confederate flag from its state capitol building after Dylann Roof allegedly shot and killed nine members of a predominantly black church in Charleston, S.C. According to CNN’s Ben Brumfield, the Confederate Battle Flag experienced a resurgence in the South as legal segregation ended.

Among those who also signed it were Kathryn Stockett, author of The Help, a novel about African-American maids working in white households in Jackson, Mississippi.

“The tide is turning with business leadership saying it hurts our ability to recruit corporations and with coaches saying it hurts our ability to recruit athletes”, state Sen. “The flag is a turnoff”. Eventually a Confederate flag that flew in the grounds of the state legislature was taken down last month.

“If you need a wordsmith to write a letter that combines the feelings of a lot of Mississippians, who better than John Grisham?” asked Cleveland. “I’m a Mississippian”, Freeze said at the time.

‘Think of America in 1931 and then in 1945 – that’s 14 years, and a tectonic shift in national identity.

The letter appeared on Saturday in the the Clarion-Ledger newspaper, the Associated Press said.