For 126 years, this was Mississippi’s state flag.
A triband of red white and blue .
And in the top left corner, a blue X lined with white stars on a red square.
This is the Confederate Battle flag.
The most recognizable lasting symbol of the American Civil War, a failed four-year campaign
of Southern states to preserve slavery in the US.
Today, the Confederate battle flag is often used as a symbol of Southern pride.
But it’s also synonymous with white supremacy.
As part of Mississippi’s state flag, it flew outside state buildings and hung in the
halls of the US Capitol.
And for decades, people across the state have fought for its removal.
It made us feel like second class citizens. That you can be comfortable flying a flag
that represented enslavement of my people. Of my ancestors.
“Take it down. Take it down.”
On November 3rd, 2020, as the US was deciding its next president, a long-awaited special
election in Mississippi voted to adopt a new flag.
This one.
It’s called the “In God We Trust” flag.
The symbols in its design speak to Mississippi’s history...
...and its future.
Almost immediately after the South lost the Civil War and over 4 million enslaved Black
people living there were freed, influential white supremacist groups started a campaign
to popularize Confederate imagery.
They built memorials, altered history textbooks, and used the flag to honor Confederate veterans.
Mainstreaming it as a symbol of Southern heritage and pride.
When state legislatures began adopting state flags in the late 1800s and early 1900s,
Georgia and Mississippi adapted the first national flag of the Confederacy and the
Confederate battle flag, respectively.
The Confederate battle emblem has been a prominent feature of Mississippi’s flag ever since.
While some Mississippians have fought to keep the flag intact, activists, led primarily
by Black Southerners, fought to have it removed.
My name is Genesis Be.
I’m an art-activist from Biloxi, Mississippi.
And my fight in this battle to change the Mississippi state flag, you know it definitely
started with my ancestors.
But in 2001 is the first time I remember it coming to a referendum vote.
A 2001 referendum would have changed Mississippi’s flag to remove the Confederate battle emblem
and introduce a new design.
I was like in high school or middle school at the time.
And it was divisive because a lot of my friends whose ancestors fought in the Confederate
Army, they revered that flag.
Some people like myself, saw it as a direct threat to our survival and a direct disrespect
to our ancestors.
In the referendum, Mississippi voters overwhelmingly chose to keep the old flag.
And when Georgia changed its flag from this to this in 2003, Mississippi became the only
remaining state flag with the Confederate emblem.
This symbol does not represent nearly 40 percent of the population of Mississippi and needs
to go.
Pressure to change the flag got renewed attention in 2015, when photos began circulating showing
white supremacist and mass murderer Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a historic
Black church in South Carolina, holding the Confederate battle flag.
Cities and public universities around Mississippi began removing the state flag from public
display.
I'm Carlos Moore and I'm a lawyer in Greater Mississippi.
I'm also municipal judge and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
In 2017, my first day on the bench, I took the flag down.
I had the flag removed.
“A flag that he abhors, and one that has been the subject of fierce debate in the state
for decades.”
There were counties that removed it from their counties, cities, municipalities, universities,
colleges.
I believe it took the Emanuel nine to get the conversation started again in earnest.
And I believe it took George Floyd to seal the deal.
In May of 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was killed by police in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, sparking widespread protests against police brutality and systemic racism.
It was during those protests where all across the world people were forced to look at what's
happening and what has happened here in America when it comes to state-sanctioned violence
against black people.
The conversation has always been: “this symbol represents heritage, not hate.”
I saw that conversation change within a week during these protests.
In June, mounting pressure following Floyd’s murder finally compelled Mississippi legislature
to abolish Mississippi’s flag, and order it taken down from government buildings.
The conversation then shifted to, okay, we understand that this symbol is hate.
What are we going to do about it?
The state formed a commission to redesign the flag, led by former Mississippi Supreme
Court Justice Reuben Anderson.
And planned to put the final decision on the ballot in the November election.
The commission opened it up to the public to submit designs, with two requirements:
add the words “In God We Trust,” the official motto of the United States.
And remove the Confederate battle emblem.
My name is Sue Anna Joe, and I’m a Mississippi native.
Sue Anna Joe submitted one of the over 3,000 Mississippi flag redesigns.
The guidelines were in fact simple, they wanted the design to be simple.
And basically I just took a big sheet of paper, and I drew a bunch of designs to submit to
the commission.
And the ones that I felt were the strongest, I went to my computer, and I remember having
this Illustrator document open and there was just a bunch of different flags littered all
over the place.
After narrowing it down, this was Sue Anna Joe’s final submission.
And the magnolia in her design ended up as the centerpiece of the new flag.
Which features elements combined from a select few of the submissions the commission received.
The elements in the final flag all hold individual significance for Mississippi.
The red and blue colors are, in fact, the official colors of the state of Mississippi.
And these 20 white stars signify that Mississippi was the 20th state to enter the Union.
And this gold star is divided into diamond shapes.
That star represents the Choctaw Indian Tribe, the only federally-recognized Native American
tribe living in Mississippi.
Who frequently make use of diamond shapes in traditional basketry and beadwork.
And, of course, the magnolia, Mississippi’s state flower and state tree.
It symbolizes longevity and perseverance.
Magnolias are over 95 million years old, which make them among the earliest plants to exist
on Earth.
That kind of speaks to the strength of the state, I believe, and the people there.
So that's the reason why I chose the Magnolia for my original designs, because I felt like
it was such a great reflection of the people in Mississippi.
And on November 3rd, 2020, the people of Mississippi agreed, and voted to adopt the “In God We
Trust” flag, as the new state flag.
It was a continuum, it was a relay race.
I ran my leg of the race, others ran the leg of the race, and we eventually got it done.
It was a huge victory for our ancestors, and the descendants.
I felt, wow, my three nieces who haven't graduated yet don't have to walk underneath that flag.
Mississippi can begin to move forward now that we've actually acknowledged the past.