AP Photo A woman holds the proposed state flag in Oxford, Miss.

By a two-to-one margin, Mississippi voters decided last Tuesday to retain the state’s controversial 1894 flag marked by an emblem taken from the Confederate flag. The ballot asked voters to choose between the current flag and an alternative design with 20 stars arranged on a field of blue to symbolize Mississippi’s number in order of admission to the Union. The vote left Mississippi as the last state with the Confederate “stars and bars.”

The debate arose last May, when the state Supreme Court held that Mississippi hadn’t had an official flag since 1906. The next day, Governor Musgrove announced plans to create a 17 member commission to study flag design. The commission held a series of contentious public hearings before recommending a new design in December. The commission also recommended that legislators let voters decide the issue.

Early in the 2001 session, lawmakers set an April 17 special election date. The next day, Musgrove and five other Democratic statewide officials, including Attorney General Mike Moore publicly endorsed the new flag. Many high-profile politicians never took a public stand on the flag issue. Among them were the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Thad Cochran and Trent Lott.

Election results reflected the racial makeup of the state. About 61 percent of Mississippi’s 2.8 million residents are white and 36 percent are black. Native Americans, Asians and others make up the rest of the population. Most majority-white counties went for the 1894 flag and most majority-black counties supported the new banner.

State NAACP President Eugene Bryant said Wednesday he plans to meet with national and regional leaders of the civil rights group to decide whether the NAACP will enact an economic boycott of Mississippi. The group boycotted South Carolina for flying a freestanding Confederate flag, first over the statehouse dome and now in front of the building.

NAACP officials have not ruled out pursuing a boycott or other tactics to keep the flag debate alive. On the other side, supporters of the 1894 banner are still collecting signatures on petitions to put the flag issue before votes in November 2002.

The question would be whether to make the Confederate decorated flag more secure by putting it into the Mississippi Constitution. Changing the constitution takes a two-thirds majority of the Legislature and majority vote of citizens.

William Earl Fagert of Heidelberg, leader of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, condemned the possibility of boycotts. “Our state had withstood yet another unbelievable assault on its culture by a few of its own citizens and other outside influence that cowered toward political correctness carried to the extreme,” Fagert said.

Supporters of the new flag say Mississippians lost a chance to erase the last vestige of segregation by voting to retain the old 1894 banner. “The old flag, outside of a symbol of racism, is an advertisement,” Jackson lawyer Tony Gaylor said.

“As long as the state continues to advertise itself as racist, it will be seen as racist. We can only hope that one day the state of Mississippi will be dragged into the twenty first century, into progress.”

“I voted because I just didn’t like the old flag,” said J.B. Goodsell of Jackson. “We lost the war 140 years ago. There’s no sense in fighting over it now. It surprised me how many people want to continue the fight.”

An editorial writer for the Baltimore Sun said by clinging to an Old South symbol, Mississippi missed a chance “to prove they’re not the hicks everyone thinks they are.” University of Southern Mississippi Political Science Professor Joseph Parker said taking shots at Mississippi is nothing new. “A governor of New York once said he was going to send the patients in their mental asylum to Mississippi; it would raise the intelligence level in both states,” Parker said.

“What people have to understand is that Mississippians resent the heck out of the constant drumming on the part of the media and others, day after day, that something’s wrong with you if you support the old flag,” Gov. Kirk Fordice said. “You have to change hearts, not the flag, if you want racial reconciliation.”

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