In January, 2019, pollsters took the temperature of state residents regarding the flag and the results continued to be discouraging. Fifty-four percent of the state would vote to keep the flag and only 43 % would vote to remove it. But in the polls in mid-June this year, the results had flipped: 55% of voters said they would vote to remove, with 41% voting to keep it. When the phrase “In God We Trust” was offered as a choice for a new flag, the number to remove the flag shot up to 72% percent.
What caused this shift? In the spring, a courageous, young and talented black football player, Kylin Hill, announced he would no longer play for Mississippi State because of the state flag. Other allies joined the call, including some who had long resisted the move—the Mississippi Baptist Association said it was time to go and even the powerful Pentecostals said it was at least worth a discussion. Thirty-two municipalities had already removed the flag from government flagpoles. All eight public universities had taken it down by demand of student activists. Twenty-one private, community and junior colleges joined them, along with over 100 businesses throughout the state. When Senator Chad McMahan of Tupelo, a Republican, rose to the well of the Mississippi Senate to advocate voting to remove the flag last Sunday, he noted that 15,000 of his constituents had contacted him with their wishes. He was voting yes to remove because 10,000 of them—a two-to-one margin—told him to change it.
Ultimately, no outside force or pressure moved Mississippi officials. A majority of Mississippians, black and brown and white moved them. The shift in attitudes and convictions did not happen overnight and came at the cost of blood and sweat and tears, of civil rights movement activists and the local leaders they supported. But finally, enough of us said with one voice, “It’s time.”
I have always loved the color purple. There was a brief moment in the seventies, when I learned that the teenybopper singer Donny Osmond’s favorite color was purple and I abandoned my first love; Osmond wasn’t cool, and at the age of thirteen, I aspired to coolness.
I matured enough in my twenties to realize that Osmond and I could both like the same color without my “cool” factor being undermined; truth to tell, I had never been cool in the first place. But for me and purple, it has been full steam ahead ever since. My first big furniture purchase, when I could finally afford something that wasn’t a hand-me-down, was a purple couch. You get the point. So, this is the place where I get to say I told you so.
In 2018, I declared we were purple and I bid us claim it and build on it. Mississippians did—not because I asked, mind you—but because enough of us understood what I said in my column two years ago: "You can’t be a Confederate American."
The work before us is still overwhelming: In 2016, the National Center for Children in Poverty noted that 49 percent of Black children in Mississippi live in poverty. Last year, the Clarion-Ledger found that Black Mississippians are twice as likely to be denied home loans as whites. The CDC revealed that Black women are at least three times as likely to die from complications in childbirth as white women. The Center for Social Inclusion found that school districts with higher proportions of Black children also have higher numbers of non-certified teachers. Added to these disparities, many in the state legislature are determined to limit Black and poor Mississippians’ voting rights.
We enter what I believe will be a dangerous time, when those who wanted to keep the flag will feel cornered and angry, a frightening combination anytime. But we can move forward with momentum now because we showed the world, and most importantly, we showed ourselves that we have changed. The stories we tell ourselves about who we are shape what we believe and how we behave. Most often unconscious, those narratives nevertheless have great power. The story we’ve told ourselves about Mississippi—as individuals who live here and as outsiders who look on in chagrin and disappointment—is that Mississippi is a backwards, racist state that will never change. It’s a comforting story, if you live outside of the state. It allows others to estimate their progress by comparison and feel better about where they are.
Last weekend, Mississippians said, “No more.”
This concludes our three part series of A Tremor in the Middle of the Iceberg written by Susan M. Glisson, Co-founder and partner of Sustainable Equity, LLC, a social change consulting firm and part of the Inclusive Innovations Collective. Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanMGlisson
* The title for this three part series about Mississippi is taken from a Bob Moses’ quote. Bob Moses, age 85, is an American educator, civil rights activist and hero, known for leadership of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on voter education and registration in Mississippi at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in Mississippi.