Jeramey Anderson on the fight to fix Mississippi's flag
You’ve said that, as a black man, “It’s all but impossible to have a simple, unguarded moment.” I was struck by that, and I was hoping you might elaborate on it a little bit.
I know there were efforts in 2015, 2016, 2001 to get this done, but none ever got any traction. Why were things different this time? A lot of my colleagues argue “the heritage defense” — that it is a part of the heritage of the people in the state of Mississippi. Even today, after the votes have been cast, I got emails and social media messages and things saying this is erasing history. And that’s not at all what this is about. I am not trying to erase history. I think we learn from our history in order to be better in the future, so we don’t repeat those mistakes.
And I always give credit to the people on the ground. There were several young people on the ground here in Mississippi. There were several municipal mayors. There were several county officials that really took a stand on this issue, university presidents that took a stand on this issue and said ‘enough is enough, now is the time to make a change.’ And that is one of the reasons why we are in this historical moment.
I don’t. I’m going to forget somebody. But of course the college presidents. If I’m not mistaken, every single one of our major universities no longer fly the state flag, even prior to this past weekend. I’m from the coast, and there is only three or four cities that still fly the state flag. There were a bunch of business entities that refused to fly the state flag. The vote was historical, but how it got there was, in my opinion, way more historical.
But I’m always cautious to give credit to a specific group of people. I think we’ve got right up to the finish line thanks to the community effort, the activist effort, the effort of lawmakers who have been here for quite some time, those who marched and protested — they got us to right up to the finish line and some of these athletic organizations just kind of gave a little nudge.
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