Flag under fresh scrutiny following Charleston church massacre, whose alleged perpetrator, Dylann Roof, was photographed holding Confederate emblem
The Confederate battle flag, as part of Mississippi’s state flag, hangs in the US Capitol along the Senate subway. Photograph: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call Inc
Lawmakers in
Mississippi plan to propose legislation to remove the Confederate emblem from the state flag, as momentum grows across the south for symbols that evoke the era of slavery to be removed from public view.
The flag is under fresh scrutiny in the wake of the mass shooting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on 17 June. Nine churchgoers were killed.
Photographs of the suspect, Dylann Roof, show him holding a Confederate flag. Many African Americans consider it to be a symbol of racial hatred. The South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, on Monday
called for the flag to be removed from the statehouse grounds.
Kenny Jones, a Mississippi state senator, said he and others would consider pre-filing a bill to change the flag in order to gauge support ahead of the next legislative session, which starts in January.
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Mississippi is the only state that has the Confederate battle saltire in its flag, though
six others have designs that allude to the group of
secessionist states that fought unsuccessfully to leave the United States in the civil war of 1861-65. Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe
indicated on Tuesday he would move to have the flag banished from state license plates.
Mississippi has used the design since 1894 and held a
referendum in 2001 in which two-thirds voted in favour of keeping it.
“I think it’s time for the whole south, with all the progressive individuals that we have, to start having a dialogue where we put out the right message that goes out to the rest of the nation,” said Jones, a Democrat who is chairman of the state’s legislative black caucus.
