Hundreds protest Confederate symbol on Mississippi flag

Among those taking part in the rally were civil rights leader Myrlie Evers-Williams and Mississippi-born rapper David Banner. Since 1894, a portion of the Mississippi flag features the infamous stars and bars.

Roughly 400 people joined the rally on October. 11 to protest the Confederate symbol, with three men holding Confederate flags in opposition to the protest, Al Jazeera America reports. But the national conversation about Confederate symbols took on a new fervor after the June killing of nine black worshippers at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The protesters are calling on the emblem to be scrapped saying it is pro-slavery image from the U.S. Civil War.

Republican state Rep. Jenny Horne of South Carolina says Mississippi is hurting its own economy with the flag.

A few prominent politicians, including the Republican speaker of the state House and both Republican USA senators, said after Charleston that Mississippi should adopt a different flag that could unify the state.

Horne gave a passionate July speech as South Carolina lawmakers voted to remove the Confederate flag from Statehouse grounds.

David Sansing, a University of Mississippi history professor, told The Washington Post in August that critics of the flag will not get their way, even if it alienates the state from the rest of the country.

Sharon Brown, who proposed an initiative that seeks to remove the Confederate battle emblem from the state flag, said she’s doing it for her mother. “I see courage. I see determination”, Evers-Williams said.

Hundreds of people rallied against the continued usage of symbols of the Confederacy.

Banner said a new flag is also about investing in Mississippi’s children.

Mrs Evers-Williams said: ‘If a former Confederate general recognizes the divisiveness of a symbol of disunity, we must do so also’. Horne helped facilitate the removal of the flag at the South Carolina Capitol following a mass shooting at a church in Charleston this summer.

There are many Mississippi residents who do not want to see the flag changed.

Nevertheless, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has said he does not expect the legislature to override the results of the 2001 referendum but that the issue could once again be put before voters. In a letter signed by author John Grisham, actor Morgan Freeman and quarterback Archie Manning, among others, they said it was “time for Mississippi to fly a flag for all its people”. “As a Christian, I believe our state’s flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed”.