It was announced today that the Magnolia flag has beat out the Great River Flag. But it’s not Mississippi’s state flag just yet. Voters get to decide whether to accept it on Election Day in November. If a majority of them vote for the flag, it becomes official. If not, the design process starts over.
Category Archives: Mississippi
Confederate Flag News
1. From Facebook, a graphic illustrating some proposals for a new flag for the state of Mississippi, in order to replace the recently-defunct Confederate-themed one. I like wavy with no wreath myself, but they’re all good designs, and historically meaningful to boot.
Then there’s the Mighty Magnolia flag, which has even more designated meaning (click the link and scroll down).
The graphic, shared on the Facebook group Flags and Vexillology, includes the motto “In God We Trust,” because the state legislature made it a requirement of the new flag. But writing doesn’t make for a good flag and I hope that the new flag does not include it (quite apart from any questions about the separation of church and state that always attend the appearance of IGWT).
2. From the Washington Post (hat tip: Tom Martin), news of a Confederate exile community in Brazil of all places:
RIO DE JANEIRO — To Marina Lee Colbachini, it was a family tradition. Each spring, she would join the throngs who descended on a nondescript city in southern Brazil, don a 19th-century hoop skirt and square dance to country music.
The theme of the annual festival: the Confederate States of America.
It’s one of history’s lesser-known episodes. After the Civil War, thousands of defeated Southerners came to Brazil to self-exile in a country that still practiced slavery. For decades, their descendants have thrown a massive party that now attracts thousands of people to the twin cities of Americana and Santa Bárbara d’Oeste to celebrate all things Dixie. The Confederate flag? Everywhere.
On flagpoles and knickknacks. Emblazoned on the dance floor. Clutched by men clad in Confederate battle gray. Decorating the grounds of the cemetery that holds the remains of veterans of the rebel army — the immigrants known here as the confederados.
In a country that has long been more preoccupied with class divisions than racism, the Confederate symbols, stripped of their American context, never registered much notice. But now, as the racial reckoning in the United States following the killing of George Floyd inspires a similar reexamination of values in Brazil, that has begun to change.
More at the link.
3. Apparently some supporters of Ireland’s Cork County GAA like to wave Confederate flags at football and hurling matches, on the principle that Cork is in the “south,” and that red is the main Cork county color. I recall seeing a video playing at the GAA museum at Croke Park and being puzzled about the appearance of some Confederate flags in the stands. I guess Cork was playing! The county GAA board condemned the practice in 2017, and recently announced that it will confiscate any Confederate flags that supporters try to bring in.
Flag of Mississippi
News of the Times: Mississippi’s Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hosemann says:
I, like the majority of Mississippians, am open to changing our current flag.
In my mind, our flag should bear the Seal of the Great State of Mississippi and state “In God We Trust.” I am open to bringing all citizens together to determine a banner for our future.
An illustration accompanying the article shows what such a flag might look like:
Mississippi Business Journal.
But we feel compelled to state that this is not a good design! A seal does not make for a good flag. This isn’t quite a SOAB (“seal on a bedsheet”), as so many state flags are – Mr. Hosemann has retained the tricolor background of the current Mississippi flag (although note that Missouri also has such a flag). But a seal is detailed and intricate and belongs on official documents or on the wall behind the governor as he takes questions from reporters, not on a flag, which should be “so simple that a child can draw it from memory.” On that front, the Stennis flag has this flag beaten hands down.
UPDATE (7/22): This is in fact Mississippi’s Bicentennial Flag, used in the celebrations in 2017 and in some instances as a de facto placeholder with the retirement of the most recent Mississippi flag on June 30.
Wikipedia.
Apparently the Stennis Flag now has an official status as Mississippi’s “hospitality flag,” and you can get it on a license plate. I reckon that it’s only a matter of time before it becomes Mississippi’s official state flag.
Wikipedia.
I still prefer the Magnolia flag as a design, although it’s probably too Confederate for current taste. It is a version of Mississippi’s secession flag, and was used by the United Daughters of the Confederacy in the nineteenth century. (Georgia might have been able to adopt a version of the first national flag of the CSA in 2003, but I doubt that such a thing could happen today.)
Wikipedia.
It’s a shame that this flag lost a referendum in 2001. It retains the horizontal tricolor of the current flag, but eliminates the Confederate battle flag on the canton for an array of twenty stars (the large central one for Mississippi, the other nineteen for previously admitted states to the Union, as in the Stennis flag).