JACKSON, Miss. — The Confederate battle emblem should remain on the Mississippi flag because it honors ancestors who fought for the South in the Civil War, a brother of former Gov. Haley Barbour told about 40 supporters at a rally Monday outside the state Capitol.
“They were fighting for the freedom of the South not to get bossed around by a bunch of Yankees,” Jeppie Barbour told reporters after he spoke on the Capitol steps.
About 40 people – all of them white – participated in the rally. As a bagpiper played “Dixie,” several Mississippi banners or freestanding Rebel flags fluttered in the breeze. One man wore a T-shirt with a Rebel flag and the slogan: “Fighting terrorism since 1861.” Another carried a large Confederate battle flag emblazoned with the slogan: “I ain’t coming down.”
Debate about Mississippi’s flag and other Confederate symbols reignited after the June 17 massacre of nine worshippers at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina. The man charged in the killings, Dylann Storm Roof, had posed with the Confederate battle flag in photos posted online before the attack.
Days after the attack, Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn became the first prominent Republican to say the state should change its flag. Citing his Christian faith, Gunn said the Confederate emblem had become divisive. At the rally Monday, people distributed yard signs with the slogan: “Keep the Flag. Change the Speaker.”
William Flowers of Atlanta, vice chairman of the Georgia chapter of League of the South, which he describes as a Southern nationalist group, said “cultural Marxists” in government and the news media are trying to eradicate Confederate symbols.
“I will do everything I can to promote secession today,” Flowers said to applause.
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