‘It’s just time.’ Will Ocean Springs have a change of heart about flying state flag?
The Ocean Springs Board of Aldermen is discussing a measure to possibly remove the state flag from City Hall and other municipal buildings, three aldermen told the Sun Herald, in what would be a dramatic reversal of their 2017 decision to raise the flag. At least one alderman now says that was a decision he probably shouldn’t have made.
They could vote on such a measure as early as their next meeting on July 7 if the state legislature does not resolve the issue before then.
Ward 5 Alderman Robert Blackman, who voted in 2017 to put the flag up, said he has hoped for years that the state would change the flag. But he doesn’t want to wait any longer.
“Do I feel like it’s gonna happen in Jackson?” he said. “Probably not. So I’m prepared to support action at this level at the next meeting if they don’t act within the next week.”
The measure would be a major reversal for the board and a deferred victory for activists in a community that has seen some of the Coast’s most emotional and divisive debates over the 1894 state flag, featuring the Confederate battle emblem.
In 2017, newly elected mayor Shea Dobson returned the flag to City Hall. His predecessor, Connie Moran, had never replaced it after Katrina left it in tatters.
Amid a public outcry, Dobson took it down briefly before the Board of Aldermen voted 6-1 to require it to be flown at City Hall and at every city building with a flag pole.
In the years since, activists continued to protest the flag — including through an unsuccessful lawsuit claiming the city violated the Fair Housing Act by flying it — and Dobson and many aldermen maintained that changing the flag was the state’s responsibility.
In recent days, as Gulfport and Bay St. Louis voted to take down the flag. Politicians, groups and Gulf Coast businesses have also called for a new state flag that better represents all Mississippians. Dobson and the Board, however, have been generally quiet on the topic that has defined their term.
Behind the scenes, however, support to consider revisiting the issue has been building.
Ward 2 alderman Rickey Authement, who represents the downtown area and many local businesses, was the only alderman to vote against the flag in 2017. Last week, one of his colleagues reached out to him to ask if he thought there might be enough votes to undo the policy they passed in 2017. Authement told him he doubted it.
The conversation among the aldermen has continued, however. Since his colleagues already know where he stands on the issue, Authement said he has largely stayed out of the discussion.
“I think there’s more of them on our Board thinking about it now,” Authement said. “I don’t know where they are on a vote.”
A third alderman and Dobson also confirmed that the Board is discussing the issue. The other aldermen declined to comment or did not respond to emails and phone calls.
‘A matter of listening’
The details of the proposal the Ocean Springs aldermen are mulling are still uncertain. But it is clear that the near-unanimous support for the flag is eroding.
“It’s just time,” Blackman said. “When there’s so much controversy surrounding that flag, it’s time to back up and say, ‘Let’s do what’s right,’ and take it down.”
Asked why that wasn’t the right thing to do in 2017, Blackman said, “In hindsight, it probably was.”
The Board’s 2017 vote had been in large part a reaction to their critics, he said. Opponents of the flag, including some Black Ocean Springs residents, had packed the Board’s meetings from July, when Dobson put the flag up, until November when the Board voted.
“When a man gets backed into a corner and told you’re gonna do this by radical extremists, sometimes you’re just gonna do what’s the opposite, just out of spite,” Blackman said.
Authement said he hopes that this time, his colleagues hear the calls for changing the flag differently.
“I’m hoping they think of it not as people bullying them, because surely I didn’t take it that way,” Authement said. “I just think it’s a matter of listening to people.”
The move comes as pressure has mounted on Mississippi leaders to change the flag. A new poll released Wednesday by the Mississippi Economic Council, which favors changing the flag, showed a majority of Mississippians support changing the flag for the first time ever.
Ocean Springs representatives in the state legislature are split on how to handle the issue, according to a tracker of legislators’ views published by Mississippi Today. Representative Hank Zuber (R-113) wants voters to decide in a statewide referendum, while Senator Brice Wiggins wants the legislature to change the flag. Representative Jeffrey Guice (R-114) has yet to comment.
This story was originally published June 25, 2020 at 9:32 AM.
