Removing state flag from Biloxi buildings is the right thing to do

We, the undersigned, enthusiastically endorse Mayor Andrew “FoFo” Gilich’s decision to remove the Mississippi state flag from Biloxi’s municipal buildings, and we urge Biloxi’s City Council to reject any action that undoes it. The mayor’s decision should stand until Mississippi establishes one flag for all of us.

The arguments that support our state flag do not bear scrutiny:

One argument for keeping our state flag in its current form, which includes the Confederate battle flag, is that it represents our “heritage,” and that the South did not secede because of slavery, but for the sake of “state’s rights.” Therefore the battle flag does not represent slavery. That is ahistorical. The Mississippi Articles of Secession expressly state that the institution of slavery was endangered by abolition, that slavery supported the world economy and that Mississippi seceded to protect it. Absurdly, Mississippi argued that the enslavement of blacks was essential to the preservation of global commerce because blacks were less sensitive to the South’s hot climate:

“In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin. ...”

Please see www.civilwar.org/education/history/primarysources/declarationofcauses.html to review the rest of Mississippi’s Articles of Secession.

The Confederacy’s apologists claim that slave owners were careful with their valuable property. However, abundant evidence of the brutal practices of the slave economy is available to anybody through a few Google searches. Contemporary first-person accounts of former slaves such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth are on Amazon.com or at the local library. Their stories plus contemporary images document how shackles, whips, bridles, overseers armed with rifles, the dismemberment of slave families at auction and forced concubinage were facts of life for slaves.

White supremacy justified slavery in the antebellum South, but it did not die with the Civil War. Decades of systemic discrimination against and disenfranchisement of blacks followed. Thousands of extra-judicial executions, or lynchings, during the 20th century, were murders in the defense of white supremacy and were meant to inspire absolute terror and submission in blacks. According to the Charles Chesnutt Digitial Archive, there were 4,743 reported lynchings from 1882 to 1966, and 73 percent of the victims were black. Furthermore, “Mississippi had the highest lynchings from 1882-1968 with 581 … 79 percent of lynching happened in the South.” Mississippi’s 581 lynchings translate to approximately seven lynchings per year for that 84-year period. Please see www.chesnuttarchive.org/.

The association of the Confederate battle flag with white supremacy is alive and well. The Ku Klux Klan uses it in their public displays. Dylann Roof, who murdered nine blacks while they were at Bible study, took selfies with it. Do we need stronger evidence that the battle flag represents white supremacy? Why, in that case, would we want it to symbolize our multicultural, multiracial state?

Beyond its ideology, the Confederacy was a defeated state. Did we keep the British flag after the American Revolution? Does Germany still fly the Nazi flag? Is the Mexican flag still flown over the Alamo? Of course not. So why does Mississippi maintain an emblem of a defunct country on our state flag? Why do any Southern whites defend it when most Southern Civil War dead were nonslave-holding poor and middle-class whites who were manipulated into fighting for the preservation of slavery as the economic driver of the millionaire planter elite?

Some argue that removing the state flag from public displays suppresses “free speech.” However, the symbols taken by public institutions represent collective values, not individual opinions — or else the term “public” becomes meaningless. Otherwise, it could be argued that the swastika should remain part of German public symbolism because German white supremacists continue to revere their Nazi heritage, or that the Mexican flag should be flown in Texas because Mexico resents the conquest of the Southwest. Individuals have a constitutionally protected right to display Confederate symbols on their person or property. However, symbols supported by everybody’s tax dollars should unite us through our common values.

In 2017 we have the advantages of information and education. Let’s not ignore history for a romanticized Confederate past. Let’s do the right thing and keep the current state flag off Biloxi’s public buildings in support of one flag for all of us. Mississippians of every race, gender and creed deserve no less.

This story was originally published May 4, 2017 at 11:09 AM with the headline "Removing state flag from Biloxi buildings is the right thing to do."