“We could get into the name of the Rebels and everything, and if that’s something that is troublesome to others, I’m sure that we would address that”, he told a reporter. This was not a surprise to me, and to be honest I am glad that they were out there.
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But as my colleague Tyler Bishop pointed out last week, the most common defense of the Confederate flag-that it’s about “heritage, not hate”-doesnpt “recognize all the rich and varied aspects of Southern heritage that the flag fails to represent”.
A Mississippi cheerleader runs along the end zone with an oversized Ole Miss flag following a score in the second half of an NCAA college football game in Oxford, Miss., Saturday, October 10, 2015.
Still, the resolution to remove the flag won by a landslide.
Despite the two votes, the battle over the Confederate emblem on the campus is not over.
UM has struggled with Old South symbolism for decades. While it means a lot of positives things for a lot of people, it also brings up a few hurt feelings for a few too. It’s the right thing to do. One has to wonder why still in 2015 people can spew such hate from their mouths. That’s where deadly white riots broke out in 1962, when James Meredith was enrolled as the university’s first black student, under a federal court order and with protection from a phalanx of US marshals. The governors of South Carolina and Alabama removed Confederate Flags from state grounds.
The University of Mississippi, commonly referred as “Ole Miss”, has made a decision to remove the Mississippi state flag from its campus due to the flag’s depiction of Confederate symbols on its likeness.
Coon says the campus is plagued with Confederate symbols that represent oppression.
As a native of Oxford, I’ve lived here all my life. The flag has been tied to white supremacist movements in the past.
Members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation spoke out against the flag following the Charleston shootings. To see beyond the confederate statue in tribute to the University Grays who fought in the Civil War.
“It was huge that the university came on the right side”, he said.
Removing the flag will not hurt this institution. “It’s nice to know as a community we can move forward”.
Broadly, the move at Ole Miss speaks to Americans’ “rapidly evolving moral and intellectual views of the South’s complicated past”, as the Monitor reported in June. It will be kept in the University Archives. Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant said in a statement to The Clarion-Ledger, “Mississippians overwhelmingly voted in 2001 to adopt the current Mississippi state flag”.
Chancellor Dan Jones was ousted in March after intensifying efforts to make the campus more racially inclusive.
Ann-Marie Herod is a native of Abbeville, Mississippi.
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Ole Miss junior Tysianna Marino said now that it’s gone she has a feeling of relief.
