We vote on the state flag Tuesday because Legislature wouldn't
By: WALTER WEBB, Editor
The time has come to vote on the official state flag for Mississippi. This is a process that is bound to leave many people upset, either way it goes and we will not see the end of it, either way it goes.The views are pretty well fixed on both sides of the issue and there are not going to be many minds changed in the next few days.
I believe the state needs to move on and put our racial past behind us. Make a positive step to present an image to the nation that is as good as we in Mississippi know we are.
I've got ancestors who fought in the Civil War and the family reunions were for the descendants of Col. Oliver Clark Watson, who lead the men of Winston County off to war.
I've never seen a Confederate flag at any of these reunions and we never spent any time talking about the Lost Cause, though in the past they probably did.
There is nothing wrong with honoring the heritage of your ancestors or displaying the Confederate flag in doing it.
However, a symbol of the state needs to represent all the people of that state. And we know that the 1894 flag does not.
That's what I believe and there are many who believe just as strongly on the other side.
But there is another issue in all this that really has disturbed me.
This whole process has the potential to do more to damage race relations than to make them better.
And number one on my list to blame is the Legislature.
They saw the hot potato cooking in the hearings which were held across the state. They knew it was coming to roost in their chambers. They knew they had much to lose any way they handled it, if they handled it themselves.
But they took the coward's way out. They passed the buck in the guise of "letting the people decide."
They've done no favor to the people of the state for forcing the vote on them. This vote is tearing the state apart on racial lines at the grassroot level.
In every precinct across the state, neighbors will come face to face on Tuesday to open old wounds and probably create some new ones.
And the taxpayer expense in the millions for running this election could have been spent on much better things...like giving the teachers the pay raises they were promised.
The Georgia Legislature just recently adopted a new flag removing the Confederate symbol from the corner and displaying a banner with all the flags that had flown over Georgia, including the Confederate flag.
They fulfilled their responsibility. The Mississippi Legislature did not. So Tuesday the people of Mississippi will do what our Legislators didn't have the courage to do.