By Rita Howell
Within a national political scene rife with agitation and strife comes the one-two punch of national headline issues for our own state. The just-signed “religious freedom” bill comes on the heels of the state flag issue that has been simmering for months.
Many respected leaders have called for the removal of the Rebel flag from our official state banner, but others, from our governor on down, have rejected that idea. Mississippi is now the only state from the former Confederacy to retain that emblem on the state flag.
A 2001 effort by then-Governor Ronnie Musgrove put a referendum on the ballot that year to replace the official flag with a newly-designed one, but the measure failed when 64 percent of those voting wanted to keep the old one.
Fifteen years later, opposition to the official flag has become more vocal and widespread, especially after the Confederate flag has been associated with the white supremacy movement and particularly the murders of nine South Carolinians in Charleston last year by a young adherent to that movement.
Our state flag, the one with the Rebel emblem, wasn’t designed until 1894, nearly 30 years after the Civil War.
What moved our leaders to seek inspiration from a lost war when they set about designing an official flag for Mississippi?
I have wondered what Gen. Robert E. Lee, patron saint of the Confederacy, would have advised.
He died only five years after he surrendered at Appomattox, but his son, Capt. Robert Edward Lee, published a volume of his letters and recollections in 1904.
In one letter he wrote, “I have thought, from the time of the cessation of hostilities, that silence and patience on the part of the South was the true course; and I think so still. Controversy of all kinds will, in my opinion, only serve to continue excitement and passion, and will prevent the public mind from the acknowledgment and acceptance of the truth.”
In another, “All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of the war and to restore the blessings of peace.”
In reference to a war monument project, he wrote “I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered.”
A contemporary wrote of Lee: “His countrymen in all the States of the Confederacy looked up to him as their guide and leader and few men have ever held a more extensive, unquestioned influence than his…where his word guided, there was to be no bitterness, no lingering grudge, no rebellious hatred. The country had been torn in pieces by dissension. But the conflict had been settled, the strife was over. There was no room, no use for dissension any more.”
“No use for dissension.”
In 2016, the affiliation of Mississippi with the Beauregard Battle Flag is raising dissension within and without our state. While many state leaders remain adamant about keeping it, businesses, corporations and universities across Mississippi are removing it, rather than offend customers and students. There can be no argument that many are offended by it. Ask the bank or college why they don’t fly the Mississippi flag out front.
With the one-two punch giving our state two black eyes this week, our leaders must step up with some damage control or nobody will want to come to Mississippi to do business. Like the local bank, our state can’t afford to offend those who would come here to boost our economy with desperately needed jobs. (Mississippi ranks 48th among the states, with 6.5 percent unemployment for February.)
Let’s relegate to museums, front porches and back bumpers the 19th Century symbol from that lost battle and adopt a banner that better represents Mississippi and Mississippians of the 21st Century.
 I think it’s what Gen. Lee might advise.