The MS state flag is coming down in Gulfport. It portrays ‘hate and racism,’ councilman says
The Gulfport City Council voted unanimously Tuesday afternoon to remove the state flag with its Confederate emblem from outside city buildings, including City Hall, as Confederate monuments are being taken down across the South after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers.
The state flag came down from the garden beside City Hall before the meeting ended.
Councilman Truck Casey sponsored the resolution. It also calls on the Mississippi Legislature to retire the state flag, the only one in the nation with a Confederate emblem, and “adopt a new flag that represents and signifies the values and principles upon which our State is now based and which unifies the people who call our state home. “
At the meeting, most residents who spoke wanted the flag changed. They associate it with racism and racial violence, they said.
“If there’s nothing wrong with the flag, why is it every time a racist act, an aggressive act is done, that flag is there?” resident John Davis asked.
“That flag, you know, says white and white supremacy. It is an insult to anyone who is not white. I ask of you, do not do the racist thing. If we are not racists, get rid of it. Nothing good that flag represents.”
All seven council members offered comments about the need for unity and removing the flag.
“This today humbles me more than anything that we could do in a vote to make a difference,” said Councilwoman Ella Holmes-Hines, the city’s longest-serving elected official.
“That flag, each time I see it, it’s harm because I have a mom that’s 94 and she remembers,” said Holmes-Hines, who is Black. “I have a great aunt that’s 100 and she remembers.”
“ . . . It is true that there are many of you that have held to the heritage of that flag and there are many evil people who have wrapped their bodies in that flag to create hate and lynching and burning.
“ . . ..We run white supremacy along with that flag.”
Billy Hewes supports Magnolia Flag
City Hall was bombarded with telephone calls and Facebook comments, pro and con, ahead of the decision. Mayor Billy Hewes posted about taking down the state flag on the City of Gulfport — Mayor’s Office Facebook page Tuesday morning.
In the statement, Hewes said he would replace the state flag with the Magnolia Flag, adopted in 1861 as the first official flag of the state. The council did not vote on a replacement flag.
The Facebook post said, in part:
“For too long, we have held on to symbols of the past. For all of our progress, we continue to embrace icons that have served to reinforce typecasts unbecoming to our citizens. This disposition impedes any real progress and fosters division.
“For too long, we have allowed a flag to fly that has come to represent hatred, division, and insensitivity, for many. It has become a distraction from all that is good in our state. It is time for that to change.”
During the meeting, Councilwoman Cara Pucheu said the flag resolution has been one of only a few issues that has lit up her phone over the 11 years she has served. She said she was “shocked” that 78% of callers in her majority white ward agree the flag should come down.
“I think things are changing,” she said. “It has been 19 years since the state voted on (flag removal). A lot of changes have taken place and I think it’s time.”
Biloxi, Ocean Springs grapple with state flag
Mississippi residents rejected changing the state flag in a 2001 referendum. Renewed debate over the flag followed the massacre in June 2015 of nine Black church members in Charleston, South Carolina by a white man who had posted pictures of himself online posing with the Confederate flag.
Biloxi Mayor Andrew “Fofo” Gilich removed the state flag from City Hall in mid-2015 after taking office in a special election. He also ordered the flag removed from other city buildings in 2017 when he learned at an NAACP and League of Women voters political forum that it was still flying in some public locations.
Ocean Springs has grappled with whether to fly the state flag, too. Shea Dobson put up a state flag at City Hall after he took office in 2017, then decided to take it down after a public outcry. The Board of Alderman voted months later to put the flag back up at City Hall and fly it at all city buildings with flag poles.
Floyd’s death and subsequent protests for an end to racism and discrimination against Blacks has brought the flag back to the forefront in the state Capitol, where legislators are once again considering a change.
The business community is widely supportive of a new flag, saying the Confederate battle emblem in the flag perpetuates a negative image of Mississippi.
Hate vs. heritage
Some white residents of Mississippi oppose changing the flag because, they say, it represents their “heritage.”
Gulfport Councilman Casey, who is Black, doesn’t see it that way.
“The flag has always been on my mind,” Casey said. “It portrays hatred and racism. That’s what it portrays, the way white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan used that flag. The flag didn’t do it, man did that.”
“It ain’t about Truck, though, it’s about the people,” he said. “Right is right. It’s time. We need to put the flag in the past and move on as one Gulfport and one Mississippi.”
This story was originally published June 16, 2020 at 2:46 PM.
