By
The Associated Press
BILOXI, Miss. - Mississippi voters are poised to make a historic decision: They'll be choosing a state flag, and in the process, passing judgment on the blue cross and stars of the Confederate battle emblem.
Supporters of the old Mississippi flag, flown over the state Capitol since 1894, say it represents their heritage and that removing the Confederate emblem from its corner would be an insult to the soldiers who fought for the South during the Civil War.
"What that flag means is freedom," Construction worker Justin McNamee of Jackson declared Tuesday at a news conference displaying both flags on the Capitol steps in Jackson.
Opponents say the 1894 flag represents the old South and its embracement of slavery.
After the state Supreme Court ruled in May that Mississippi hadn't had an official flag since state laws were updated in 1906, legislators set an election to give voters a choice between the 1894 flag and another design.
Gov. Ronnie Musgrove says the new design, which replaces the emblem with a blue field and 20 white stars - representing Mississippi's entry as the 20th state in the union - will move Mississippi forward economically and socially.
"It's for our dignity," Mayersville Mayor Unita Blackwell said. "It's for the wrong that's been done."
Blackwell sees the April 17 vote as a way to push for equality and a form of justice in a state where integration came at a high cost, including the murders of NAACP leader Medgar Evers in Jackson in 1963 and three civil rights workers in Neshoba County a year later.
She still remembers the beatings she endured and the days she spent behind bars as she worked to register blacks to vote in the 1960s.
"Why are these symbols so important to some whites in Mississippi and not to other whites and blacks?" she asks. "Why is a flag with a connotation of slavery so important to them? It's a piece of rag that symbolizes this division and hate."
Georgia - the only other state with the Confederate battle emblem on its flag - raised a new state flag in January, with the once-dominant emblem reduced to one of five tiny flags from Georgia's history along the bottom.
South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol dome last year after a series of protests and boycotts. And Florida quietly removed a Confederate battle flag from its Capitol in February, along with three others commemorating the French, Spanish and British governments that once ruled the state.
William Ferris, the former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, said the controversy over the Confederate flag is nothing new in regard to its relationship to the New South.
"The old issues of race have plagued the South from the Colonial period to the present, and the struggle over the flag is the latest chapter in dealing with race relations," said Ferris, director of the National Endowment for the Humanities in Washington.
Part of the problem is the use of the Confederate battle emblem by the Ku Klux Klan, said Susan Glisson, interim director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
Glisson said groups such as the Sons of Confederate Veterans are trying to separate the flag from racially charged messages, but added, "They should have made that clear when the Klan took that symbol over. It seems to me that they are too late now."
Somewhere in the chasm between race and heritage, there is a group of Mississippians who will vote to keep the 1894 flag for reasons ranging from indifference to indignation. Roger Ritch is among them.
"A smaller group of people wants to enforce their thoughts on a larger group," said Ritch, a white casino worker who calls the flag fight pointless.
"We're wasting a lot of money over a moot issue," he said. "The South is not going to rise up and fight again."
