Shortly after the vote in Mississippi, the flag resembling the slave owners was brought up over parliament.
Both Mississippi Houses of Parliament voted by a majority to change the state’s controversial flag. The flag, which has been in force since 1894, commemorates the former slave owners in the southern states of what is now the USA, the so-called Confederates, who had lost the American Civil War less than 30 years earlier.
According to US media reports on Sunday, Mississippi was the last state whose official flag still reminded of the Confederates. Of the African American George Floyd dies in a brutal police operation in late May and the subsequent protests against racism had given new impetus to opponents of the flag.
After the State House of Representatives, the Senate also voted on Sunday evening to abolish the current flag. Senators voted 91 to 23 in favor of the change, according to numerous US media reports. Republican governor Tate Reeves had already announced on Saturday that he would sign the relevant law as soon as he had it.
Raising the flag
According to the law, a commission is to work out the new flag by mid-September. It is to contain the motto “We trust in God” and will be presented to the voters on November 3, parallel to the presidential election.
Local television broadcaster WLBT 3 reported that the flag above the parliament had been brought up just minutes after the vote – despite demonstrators campaigning for the flag in front of the building. Democratic nominee-elect Joe Biden described the Mississippi polls as a moral victory. The previous state flag has an image of a Confederate war flag in the upper left, often simply called the Southern flag.
The flag of the former oppressor regime, which is still popular in parts of the southern states, is coming under increasing pressure due to its racist past. The popular motorsport series Nascar, for example, prohibited spectators from bringing the flag to races a few weeks after Floyd’s death.
