Radiolab - The Flag and the Fury

Episode Date: July 13, 2020

How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying.  A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days before that, it coming down would have seemed impossible. Shima Oliaee dives into the story behind this de-flagging: a journey involving a clash of histories, designs, families, and even cheerleading.  This episode was reported and produced by Shima Oliaee. To read or listen to Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Heavy/Kiese-Laymon/9781501125669.

Before we start, this podcast contains a fair amount of strong language. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. You're listening to Radio Lab. Radio Lab.

From WNYC. To C. To C. To C. I pledge to never be passive, patriotic or grateful in the face of American abuse. I pledge to always thoughtfully bite the self righteous American hand and think it's feeding us. I pledge that white misoccipients and white Americans will never dictate who I choose to

be or what symbols I choose to and be with meaning. I pledge to not allow American ideals of patriotism and masculinity to make me hard, abusive, generic, and brittle. I pledge to messily love our people, and myself better than I did yesterday. I pledge to be the kind of free that makes justly winning and gently losing possible, to never ever confuse cowardardists with courage. I pledge allegiance to the Mississippi freedom fighters who made all my pledges possible. I pledge allegiance to the baby Mississippi liberation fighters coming next.

This is my pledge of allegiance to my United States of America and to my Mississippi. Ready or not, this is a pledge to my home. Are y'all standing up? Resolution passed. History will be made here today. Okay, Mississippi. A savage, uncivilized state. A state of extremes.

Murder and racial hatred. Injucks and Mississippi. The state where Emmett Till was brutally murdered. Medgar ever was assassinated. Shot in the back by a single round from a high powered rifle. The state with the highest number of lynchings in the union, but also a staggeringly high number

of Nobel, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award winners, the most charitable state in the union. Mississippi is also the state with the highest percentage of black people in America. And for the last 126 years, Mississippi has had a Confederate battle flag on their state flag, sort of upper left hand corner. Red, white, and blue stripes, Confederate battle flag, upper left. Other states like South Carolina and Georgia would fly the Confederate flag on their state

capitals, but one by one they took them off. Mississippi was the last holdout. Until last week. You might have heard about this on the news. I want to tell you the story behind this deflagging. It's an amazing story, something we've been following for months, because it's way more than just another story about taking down a thing. Just because we've had it for years doesn't mean we need to keep it. This is a journey that involves the clash of histories.

I don't know. outright hate. Freedom. Designs. Just hate. Encourage. Just hate. Generations.

There will be a retribution. And philosophies about how to make change. This is a story that I've been working on with my dolly parents America colleague, Shima There will be a retribution. And philosophies about how to make change. This is a story that I've been working on with my Dolly Parton's America colleague, Shima Oliai. She'll start us off. Okay, so story starts. In a sea of red. It was just as far as I could see.

Confitra flags. And the stands, instead of pom-poms, you can see the flag waving like it was a pom-pom. And then they didn't have a flag. They would take their shirts off and paint it on their bodies. It was like a sea of Confitra flags. But we just kind of saw it as that's their symbol. Can you just say your full name? Okay. So Clara, Justice, and I'm the Vice President of Business Complete Solutions in San Diego. The place that Clara is talking about is the University of Mississippi or Ole Miss.

This is a place where during football games, they would roll out a Confederate flag that was as big as the football stand. It was massive. The second biggest Confederate flag in the country. That's Ashton Pittman. Senior reporter at the Mississippi Free Press. What's the biggest? I do not know what the first is, but it If you walked around cheerleaders carry confederer flags, but it was everywhere

But then the first domino falls Better for me. He's my microphone as well Maybe well, you're using your cell phone, right? I'm gonna record it with my mic, but I can you you tell me. The movement to D. Dixie, the Mississippi State flag, it is a long, convoluted, confusing many-headed history, but you could argue that it really goes back to one guy, John Hawkins, Ole Miss Class of 1984. I had a lot of different hats when I was at Ole Miss. Aside from being a student, I was busy when I arrived.

Trying to figure out how to get on the basketball team. Because I had been a pretty high school player, a great schooler, and of course, the seat would have it. I got injured, it wasn't as good a basketball player as I thought I was in what off to do some other things. John got involved with student government. Yeah, became president of the black student body. He was on all kinds of committees, was in a black fraternity. He was basically a man about campus. Now just for context.

We only had about 500 black students in the whole campus of what, 13,000. So, what's that percentage wise, 2%, maybe 3%, closer to 8%, but still. So, it's a really small number, so I'll never have been. And you gotta keep in mind that this was only 20 years after a man by the name of James Meredith. James H. Meredith. Became the first black student to enter the University of Mississippi. And the town becomes an armed battlefield.

President Kennedy had to send the National Guard armed with tear gas and side arms over that. Two men are killed, scorn 150 are arrested after a night of terror. Thousands of federal troops, days of riots, it was rough. In any case, one day John sophomore year he's sitting at a black student committee meeting and they're discussing the cheerleading squad. There had never been a black cheerleader at Ole Miss and it's 134 years of existence. In my good friend Claire Bibs, there we go.

I always wanted to be an Ole Miss cheerleader. She... I was like, gonna be trying out. Her partner, who was helping her child, was a white male, which was in and of itself, kind of unheard of at that time at Ole Miss, but it's just spoke to the fact that things are starting to change on campus.

Yes, problem was the white guy gets injured and now Claire had no partner. She was in the lurch about two weeks or so before trials and we were having this committee meeting trying to determine Okay, so what can we do? You know, Claire's our best hope to ever achieve this. We just didn't have a solution and someone Hashted me if I would consider doing it because I mean I was athletic enough. He was he's very tall and he's very strong I'm like five one and a half-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1- So I ended up saying, yes, sure, I help her. All right. So for two weeks, John and Claire met up, practiced.

It was fun aspects of learning to be a children for the first time. It was learning how to do partners dance. He crammed to learn all the moves, like what they call a cheer extension. Where she stands in front of him, he puts his hands by your waist. She give her a little jump. She hops up. The guy takes his right hand and puts it under your butt. And she's sort of lifted up into the air

to sit on his hand that's held high above his head. And he holds your other left leg with his hand. High on the thigh above the knee, never on the knee. It was a lot of lifting of me, a lot of picking me up. You know, pick up the girl, throw the girl's eyes. You can't catch the girl. Don't let it get hurt. Keep in mind, back in these days, Miss was like the national cheerleading champion.

Very competitive. So being an Ole Miss cheerleader was a big deal. Anyhow, John got up to speed and the two of them try out for judges along with hundreds of other mostly white students. And then there was just kind of faith that the through us a curveball. Because, you know, the process at Ole Miss was a little bit stacked. Right, right, right. So, the way the cheerleading squad at Ole Miss worked is that... There was a qualifying process. You had to try out.

You'd have this huge tryout where it would get narrowed down to the top 10. The top 10, males in the top 10 females. Well, this is what it would have it. We both make the top 10. We both make the cut. Wow. That's been pretty big deal. Yeah.

And that in and of itself was phenomenal. The complication was how the process worked is that after that first cut, then it went to a vote, a popular vote. So once you've gone through the gauntlet and demonstrated that you had the ability and then became a popularity contest on campus, where you then have to go out and campaign and get your groups of friends, fraternities, sororities,

whatever to vote you in. So the votes were paper just by word of mouth. Of course, you know who I was campaigning for. Right. I was campaigning if we're clear. And trying to see if we could get her on that slide. But John was a very visible guy. Whereas I was the opposite. I was a journalist. Wasn't any sororities.

Make-along story short. I ended up getting elected. But I didn't. Oh, that's complicated. Yeah, it was a real complicated issue. What was the conversations with Claire right after that? It was devastating because I didn't want to do it. I mean, I was only there for her.

I was at a friend's house and someone called me. I was like, okay, I didn't want to do it. I mean, I was only there for her. I was at a friend's house and someone called me. I was like, okay, I didn't make it, not a big deal. I think everybody was just in shock, wait a minute. This wasn't how I was supposed to go. They were like, it wasn't supposed to go down like this. How did this happen? I think it's kind of how everybody looked at it. And they kind of looked at me like,

oh my God, we're so sorry. I'm like, don't be sorry. You have to understand coming out of Jim Crow. I wasn't used to things going my way anyway. Claire told us she grew up in a rural town in Central Mississippi that even as late as 1976, 1976 had separate entrances for black and white citizens. And you guys, and just briefly because you guys never talked it out. At that time. No, we didn't. Because I mean, even before she and I could have that conversation about what does it mean and so forth, the evening of the election. April 22, 1982.

It was such a momentous occasion. John says initially the vibe was positive. It was a great spirit on campus, both black and white kids, really were celebrating that achievement in them itself. Reporters though, chased him around campus, finally cornered him in the student union, and then began to bombard him with some difficult questions. After that, I'm thinking, holy cow, what did I get him into?

One reporter asked, would he be comfortable with a white female partner as the ghost of Emmett Till entered the room? Apparently, John answers, this is a new age and the time has passed for prejudice. And of course, that's when the If It Was Question comes up and someone asks me about the Confederate flag And if I was going to follow this tradition and wave the rebel flag

That's how every game started with male cheerleaders running out and waving a giant battle flag Listen, I never expected to have to ask that question John said he literally had never contemplated it Because he never thought he'd be a cheerleader to begin with. In that moment, between when he was asked the question and when he answered, a few things went through his mind. He thought about his grandmother. She died when she was 102 years old.

Wow. So, imagine this for a moment. This is my grandmother. Not my great-great-grandmother. This is my grandmother whose mother was born a slave. He thought about the fact that when he got chosen for the cheerleading squad, he suddenly started seeing a whole lot more of those rebel flags being carried around campus, almost as if they came out in reaction to his presence.

He thought about how the tuition he paid helped. By those flags, that we had no interest at. And so, who the question came up about the flag. He says he just looked at the reporter, squaring the eyes, and said, And of course not. The answer was no. And that just came out that wasn't premeditated? No, it was instinctive. I hadn't even thought about it. For a black person, my John, to carry the Confederate flag

is like a Jewish person carrying a swastika. From the moment he said no, the story exploded. With the equivalent of viral, keep in mind this is before social media. The Confederate flag is at the heart of an emotional racial dispute at the University of Mississippi. We talk about agitation in the context of George Floyd. No, I can tell you what agitation looks like. The flag of the Confederacy has always been the cause of not so subtle agitation, but those feelings had been unspoken until the university's first black cheerleader refused to carry the flag.

People were leading hostile protests on the campus. John received death threats. The Ku Kuk clan held an off-campus march in protest. Someone said his dorm room on fire. Probably what the most hated person in this house, you know, this is Curtis PD Scott. He was in John's fraternity at the time. John and I was best friends and they were two doors down.

He told me the story about just how bad things got. There was one night he says when they were all at the fraternity house and the police came in and said, we want y'all to turn out the light get down on the floor and we were like what is going on? All of a sudden we could hear the chance coming from afar and it was getting louder and louder so you know we looked out there and we saw the mob marching down jack to street. 1,000 white students held a noisy rally in support of the flag earlier this week. Flag waving white students marched on a black fraternity house. I will never forget the chance. We won't hock us. We won't hock us.

It is almost as though they want to break in the house or you don't want us to get John and throw him through the mall. Curtis says black students from around the campus started running to the fraternity house to defend them, but the police stopped them. Thank God it didn't happen. Thought that would have been a horrible scene. I mean, it would have been totally horrible. You know, the state police was called out at one point. State troopers, city police. Which reminded a lot of people of 1962. Mobs came out, stopped traffic.

Black students held a counter-demonstration, demanding that the university find another symbol. That really carried through into the full year. When I was on the squad, your game days were quite interesting. John says before games, they'd taken from a safe house, sneak him into the stadium, where he'd then lead cheers for people who booed him. Wow, it must have been really lonely standing on that field. Well, not only on that field, but on every field every time we showed up for a football game. After 12 football games of this, 20-something basketball games, continued protests, counter-protests, the chance of the school. A man named Porter Fortune issued a statement.

If there is a feeling that racism exists on our campus, I want to be the first to attempt to get rid of him. The mob, they marched on his mansion. So he thought he was like, what's I need to do? I feel like my life is in jeopardy now. And as a result, the'll fly, it has been dropped as the school symbol.

Can you read that article from April 23rd, 1983? You know I'm an old man now, so if I can get my glasses, I need them. But the chance of the University of Mississippi trying to defuse a racial dispute said yesterday the Confederate flag will no longer be used as a school symbol. This was the lightning rod event. The NAACP for years had been thinking about starting a campaign against the display of

the Confederate flag. They wanted to take this down, but they thought there was no way it could ever happen in Mississippi. It took this one guy to say no, I'm not going to wave a flag. For everyone to just ponder the idea that it could be possible. It went off subsequently, talked to Claire, you know, I think she even said that, you know, maybe God chose you for that moment more so than me because he knew that you can handle it. I think in hindsight, that was meant to be. It was meant to be that way. He stood his ground, he didn't carry it.

He didn't let them push him off the squad. I don't know that I would have had that strength. So I'm glad it was John. You know, sometimes the universe lines up in such a way that it's a time for change. It's so weird to be talking to you right at this minute because right now, literally as we are doing this interview, the Mississippi State Legislature is meeting and they may be about to take down the flag. I just got a text from a senator saying in 10 minutes, like literally, like in five minutes,

the flag could go down. Well, hopefully they'll do the right thing. Yeah. It's a long overdue. So in 1983, the University of Old Mist decides no more Confederate flags can be flown at Olmist. This was the first domino, but it was only a baby domino. White students applauded the chancellor's decision to permit individuals to carry the flag.

He was trying to thread the needle, right? As long as I can bring it to the game, I don't care. And the even trickier part was, since the Confederate flag was actually embedded in the Mississippi game I don't care. and would remain that way for another 32 years. Until? It is heartbreaking video tape taken just before the church massacre that shocked the world. 2015, a deranged racist walks into a historic black church in South Carolina kills nine people and is later found in an old photograph

to be holding the Confederate battle flag. Last night, the University of Mississippi Student Government Association voted to remove the flag bearing the Confederate battle emblem. The school then finally decides they cannot fly the state flag. The recent racially motivated church shootings in South Carolina giving momentum to those who want it taken down. So at this point, the flag poles are empty. And not just at Ole Miss. All across the state, you begin to see businesses removing the Mississippi State Flag. Question was, what to put in its place? And that's when you start to see another flag being hoisted. And this brings us to chapter two.

Oh, to Lauren. Here we go, give me a hug. Oh, we can't do that. Ha, ha, ha. We zoomed with Lauren Stennis for the first time back in April. Oh hell, stop. Roomba just came on.

Oh really? Oh, I just met my first Rumba just a couple days ago. They're so loud. Damn you, Rumba. It was early pandemic. Lauren was quarantined in her home slash art studio in Jackson, Mississippi with her cat and dog and Rumba. Her journey to the center of the Mississippi flag fight

takes a very different trajectory than Johns. Yes ma'am. Around the same time that he was stepping foot on old miscampus for the first time, she was talking to birds. Well my mother fed birds when I was growing up and you know these gold inches that are just stunning when they're in their summer plumage. I just was entranced as a kid. And to the point that I started thinking birds were talking to me. But there's a pill for that, yeah. So. Lauren says her childhood was pretty idyllic.

I would lay down in the middle of clover and watch clouds. I would get little locust shells off the trees, you know, played in the creeks and looked at tadpoles. And when you were that young, like, seven or eight, did you have any concept of the your grandfather was who he was? Not exactly. I really had no sense of kind of who my grandfather was in the larger sense. Lawrence grandfather by the way,

is John Stennis, or was John Stennis, he died in 1995, Southern Democrat who served in the Senate for over 41 years and for much of that time, he was a staunch segregationist. I think I became conscious of that, probably in high school really. I'm curious what that was like to learn that, because if you read his early letters, he talks really openly about how he believes black people are inferior. And we let them do largely as they wanted to do and didn't punish him. The fact that he opposed the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, it must be stopped if we have personal liberty

and freedom left for anyone. Even a holiday for Martin Luther King. And I'm certain in my belief. How do you process that given that, given what you believe in also the fact that he is your grandfather? I mean, you know, hearing and reading various things, you know, I get a little nauseated to be honest. It's, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be, be that I'm related, you know, that he was a white guy born in 1901,

less than 40 years after the Civil War and a rural, unincorporated, you know, I mean, it's like, am I shocked? No. I mean, I'm able to see him in his context. I would love it if he had been this amazing guy who was able to transcend everything he was taught and came out as this early progressive leader. It was wrong, it's indefensible. But am I shocked?

Not particularly. Lawrence political awakening and subsequent interest and flags was slow to take by her own admission. After high school, she went to Tulane. I left Tulane with a 1.7 GPA, because I just quit going to class. I think at that point, I was just kind of raging against the machine and I didn't even fully understand what the machine was and that really I was part of it.

She says she started to see and understand that machine when she transferred from Tulane to millsaps back in Mississippi and then fell into a rabbit hole of ethics classes and women's studies courses and soon began to write cutting essays about politics for an alt progressive newspaper. We were just, we were initially just shocked that someone who came from what appeared to us to be like such voracious races, beginnings could give her at that point, 21, 22 year old life, to causes that would probably make her

grandfather like squeal. This is author Kiece Lema and again, who started us off with that alternative pledge. He and Lauren worked on that paper together at Mills Habs and they politically organized together. You know, growing up, we were always kind of taught that there was group of people called good white folks and those were, you know, and you questioned the motives of good white folk, but you know,

once somebody like bleeds over to that category, like, you know, we knew early on that Lauren was good white folk. Okay, so let's jump forward to your flag. When did you begin that journey? It started when I moved back. This is after she had gone to school moved away Become a social worker and an artist and then returned. I bought a little house and

Just instinctively when I was like I'm home and I was excited and I was proud And I like my little house and I wanted to put out a flag You know I'm back I mississippi and I would never Never have our current state flag. And I just, I just kind of sat down and just thought, this is ridiculous. This is absurd that Mississippi and didn't have a flag that anyone could fly without a moment's hesitation. So after reflecting on that, I began to do some research. So I ended up down at archives. She said she just wanted to know if there are other options

out there besides the 1894 Mississippi State flag with the Confederate battle flag on it. And she says the first thing that she encountered was that there was a flag before that flag. The Magnolia flag, as it was called, this was the flag that people said was the first state flag of Mississippi. It was created in 1861, what you see is a white background and cartoonish green tree in the middle. It's so ugly, it's cute.

Because the Magnolia tree is a blob. Yeah, it just looked like a... It just looked like a Afro, it looked like a big-ass green Afro, like a Wopt, what we call, he's called like a Wopt Afro. What's a Wopt Afro? Like a Wopt, you know, Afro is supposed to be round,

you know, when we used to have froze, like Afro sometimes wouldn't be like round, they'd be like off to the side if you fell asleep or, it just, it just, I mean, to to me that's the first thing I thought I would actually like a throw in the middle but it's not shape right but like okay so Lauren initially thought oh I'll just fly the magnolia flag problem is it was commissioned and designed for the newly-succeeded republic of Mississippi in 1861. There you go. Okay. And I was like, uh-oh.

At a certain point, Lauren just thought, why am an artist? Let me see what I can come up with. I started to kind of doodle. I started to, because I knew flags that I love. Like Tennessee has a great flag. Colorado, New Mexico. And I knew good flags when I saw them.

And I thought, what is it? That question led her to the wonderful world of Vexilology. It took me forever to be able to say it, but it's the study of flags. There's a whole field of study about flags. It is primarily a bunch of old white guys. This is a flag. That'll mansplain. And this is a flag.

And this is a flag. This is a flag. And this is a flag. They were so excited when I joined the North American Vexological Association. I was certainly I think the youngest member and one of their only female members. And this is a flag. She ultimately got to work coming up with a design that looks a little like a deconstructed remixed American flag.

He's got three vertical stripes, red, white, red. And the red color really symbolizes the blood spilled by Mississippians who have given their lives for liberty and justice. In the middle of the flag you have a circle of stars. When I was looking at indigenous art among tribes that were native to Mississippi even before statehood, I would see a circular or spiral element in some of the work. The circle she says was a nod to them also to the endless cycles of history. You know, no beginning, no end.

There are precisely 19 stars in the circle for the 19 states that joined the union before Mississippi and inside the circle. The star in the middle is the 20th, and it's the biggest in the best, and that's us. Lauren took that mock-up and sent it to a guy. Recording starting now. Name Ted Kay. I'm the Secretary of the North American Vexilological Association. He's famous in the Flag World.

He's a God. Ted literally wrote the book Good Flag, Bad Flag, where he outlines the five principles of good flag design. Simplicity, meaningful symbolism, few colors, no lettering or seals, and distinctiveness. So I emailed him and said, you don't know me from Adam's house cap, but here's what I have, and I would love your feedback. And he was so kind and so generous. He wrote back and he said, I love your design. All I would do is make the stars bigger. Bigger? As big as you can get them. You know, but you've got a top 10 flag design,

top 10 United States flag design here. it's great. It may well be showing Mississippians that a different flag could represent the state. And good luck with that. But I've had informal conversations with at least five different people who are working on proposed flags in Mississippi. Like recently? In the last couple years, yes. Having a good design, C Ted, is just the beginning. And there's a lot more to flags than what's on them.

In our conversation, he walked us through the long history of flags. And I got to say, it's sort of put the whole Mississippi flag fight in a new context. Flag started out as markers on the battlefield. And this is true all the way up through the Civil War. It's very important to know where your troops are on the battlefield and they are marked by flags. Imagine he says, two armies face off. It's a melee. The sides get confused and you need to regroup. You look for the flag and you run to the flag.

So it's important to have someone carry that flag and one of the problems when you're carrying a flag is you can't shoot back. You are defenseless and everybody wants to shoot at you because if you can knock down the enemy's flag, you reduce their ability to know where their troops are. So the culture of the military was to imbue great honor in being the flag bearer. Because that's what you needed to do to get someone to sacrifice. There are stories of battles in the Civil War where there would be one charge across the battlefield. One would be shot, the next guy would pick it up, he'd be shot, the next guy would pick it up, he'd be shot, six people

would die carrying that flag. So it's very important in military propaganda, I would say, to have people feel strongly about the flag. Oh, that's so interesting. Like, in some sense, the way in which we revere and honor and sing to, and then fight over the flag, is a direct spiritual line back to the battlefield. It could well be. After that, he says, in America, we don't have a king or queen. We put all of that difference up on the R flag. And you feel the emotional weight of that when you look back to 2001. Governor Tuck, Mr. Speaker, members of the Mississippi legislature, Chief Justice Pittman.

After years of people submitting bills to change the flag that went absolutely nowhere, in 88, 1992, 93, the governor at the time, Ronnie Musgrove. I implore you to hear our people again. Urge the legislature to give the decision to the people. I urge you to put this issue on the ballot. In a referendum, and leading up to that people. I urge you to put this issue on the ballot. In a referendum. And leading up to that vote.

There were a series of town halls across Mississippi. Tonight's first Friday flight special features a representative sampling of the views expressed by Mississippians at the five public hearings dealing with the future of Mississippi's flight. You can watch these town halls online. They took place in auditoriumsium's church basements, and they are, well, they're battles. Where does it stop?

So we are tired of this onslaught against the Confederate heritage. It needs to stop, and it needs to stop right now. Our state flag represents grit, guts, and cajotes. Our state flag represents pride. If you want people to get it, this is the year 2000. We will not go back. We will not go back.

That flag must be changed. I believe all over the country. We are the last and star of America. That slide represents Mississippi being still state in education. 50 in per capita income. Number one in infant mortality. Number one in lynchie.

We cannot afford to keep that flag. We must move forward. This flag is just like my wife. You must, my wife, go get your ass here. It's not going to be cool. We're very cool. We're very cool. We're very cool. And if you've had it, but that is both, we're gonna get into it. Our state flag, you listen, you listen over there, playing live. Our state flag represents blood, sweating tears of countless southerners who were a far-sighted better than any of y'all.

Now listen, Mr. Winner. Mr. Winner was the head of the flag commission, former governor. He was in the room. You are despicable. You are an annepthma. You are an ennepthma. So what is harmful in this state? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, listen, you have been nothing but a parasite your entire career. You're a sorry law, you're gutless, you are worthy of being tarred and feathered and run out of the state. It goes on and on like this. One of the craziest moments in a sea of crazy is when a 17 year old white girl with bright orange hair steps up to the mic. I am a young girl working in a grocery store environment.

I do work with blacks and I have several, not just one or two, but several friends who are black. One person said, where would the slaves in America be today if it weren't for slavery? They probably still be in Africa, in slaves, or other European nations. Another person asked me to point out, most not all of the African American race living in America today got their last name from their masters. Are you prepared to give up your name? I don't think you are. Because if you get my flag, I will get your name. Wait a minute, this! Take your peg and get out!

So that was 2001. And before we get back to Lauren, as you watch these videos, one thing that you can't help but ask yourself is, where do some of these people get these ideas from? Right, but I will say that. This is a question that Ash and Pittman, the reporter we spoke to earlier, asked himself,

and he started to actually track down some of the people in the video, including Orange Hared Girl, who by the way is a radiologist today and was validator in the never-hice class. And what he discovered is that most of them went to what's called segregation academies. Yes, almost all of them were set up in either 1969, 1970 or 1971. I mean this Supreme Court ruling The school will be segregation ordered in Mississippi began today to desegregate the public schools came in December 1969 Reaction to the ruling was predictable angry and swift by the start of the school year for white to abandoning the public schools January 1970 Private schools are appearing in great numbers. You had a white kid the school year for whites who were banning the public schools. January 1970, private schools

are appearing in great numbers. You had a white kid not returning to their public schools and going to make shift schools that were set up in white churches. White volunteers are converting a tent factory into classroom. Or in make shift building. Many of these schools represent a last resort for white parents determined to resist federal desegregation orders. That's the origin of a ton of these academies. I think at one point they were like, And one estimate is, they number in the thousands. Wow.

Yeah, they went up overnight. So if you make sure your kids only go to white schools with other white kids, you don't have to worry about, you know, maybe your kids developing some empathy for their black classmates, having a greater understanding of viewpoints that are outside of that kind of white supremacist mindset. And in 2001, and still today, honestly, a lot of these private academies that popped up in 1970, 71, even in 2001, a lot of them were still either all white or, you know, 99, 98% white.

And that's still true today. In fact, Ashton told us that he and his husband, William, found that over a third of the current Mississippi senators today attended segregation academies. In any case, in that 2001 referendum, 64% chose the 1894 flag over the alternative. Mississippi voted to keep the state flag, Confederate battle flag and all. And people were like, well, 65% of the people in Mississippi voted

to keep the flag. No, 65% of the people who showed up that day, but only 23% of our population showed up to vote that day. Suffice to say the vote went along racial lines, but the mostly white, pro flag contingent unsurprisingly had better turnout. At that point I was like, I got, it was a little daunting. As Lauren was doodling new flag designs rooting around in the archives and reading all the letters people sent during that 2001 referendum, she started to wonder how do you prevent that from happening again? I mean obviously part of it is entrenched in systemic. Part of it, it occurred to her, was just a pattern that she had seen in her social work

where one person saying stop, only causes the person they're saying it to, to dig in harder. This is kind of where the psychology part comes in. I began to realize that many of the other previous effort took the angle of trying to shame some misdiscipients. Psychologically, if you're saying, yeah, that's the hashtag that a lot of people were using. Take it down, take it down, take it down, take it down. Now psychologically, if you're saying I'm going to

take something from you, even if you're not that attached to it, you might start to squeeze it a little bit. This flag is just like my wife. And be like, no, wait a minute. You're not gonna get your You might start to squeeze it a little bit. This flag is just like my wife. And feel like no way to mend. You messed up my wife, go get your own kid. So the psychology of loss is really strong. But if I'm offering you something, and I'm doing something positive,

and I'm not threatening you, it just makes sense. And so my hashtag has been put it up. OK, so 2015 after Lauren had designed her flag, workshopped it a bit with Ted K, she puts the design on Facebook. I didn't have any plan at that point. She said it was just for her friends to see, but then a few things happened.

There's the mass shooting at the Black Church in South Carolina, old Miss, then votes to take down the state flag on their campus, and in the wake of that, Lauren gets a message from a state senator saying, by the way, I just introduced a bill to change the state flag to your flag. And I typed, what? Oh, wow.

She had not reached out to me. She had just seen what I was doing on Facebook and was like, I'm going to go for it. So that really got the ball rolling. That particular bill didn't go anywhere. Once again, all flag bills died in committee. But. Oh, game on. So I, she went

ahead and manufactured a bunch of her flags anyway, took him to a local flag store in Jackson, Mississippi. Y'all keep the money. I just, I just ask if you will please make it affordable. Because this was a moment when business after business was following old Mrs. Leade and taking that state flag down, which left a lot of empty flag polls for her flag to go up. And within a year, her flag, which she called the Mississippi hospitality flag, but everybody else called the Stennis Flag. It was the number one selling flag in the state, which is, oh, wow. She was beginning to outsell the 1894 state flag many times over. I mean, that, that, that flag store is making

bank. And more and more, it's caught on. You see it flying more places but last, not this current session that got called because of the pandemic, but the session before that. I was approached by a Republican lawmaker who said, have you thought about doing a specialty license plate? Her and this Republican lawmaker cook up a plan that when people order these vanity plates, these are license plates where you have special messages on them, those plates would arrive with her flag on the license plate rather than the actual state flag.

He said, let's just not draw any attention to it, because it turns out that the way they passed the specialty tags, they grouped them all together in one bill and just kind of pass them at the end of the session. And so people may or may not read it very carefully. So I had to sit on it. I didn't say a word. And it passed.

We've already raised close to $40,000 for the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum and the Museum of Mississippi History because I chose them as the recipient for the proceeds. It's like you guys are leading a quiet revolution. Well, I would never use the term like revolution or whatever because that's threatening to me. Yeah.

I am way behind the scenes and I'm really quiet versus, you know, like when people go change to flag rally, I'm like, oh shit. Oh shit. The whole time, that's been Lauren's approach. Keep it stealth. No referendums, no public debates. Just get it out there on cars and banks and fraternities and bars so that people start seeing it. Oh, yeah, my neighbor has that.

Oh, yeah, I saw that at Steve's diner downtown. You know, it's like, that's how it happens. It becomes inevitable. It's like, we're almost there. We're almost there. I mean, you know, my thing with Lauren is like, I just think she knows why people in a way that I don't. I mean, I think why people have talked to her

and said thanks to her that they've never said to me. In one of my phone calls with Kaysa Lehmann, Lauren's friend, Ryder, I asked him what he thinks about the stealth approach. I'm not gonna say that that's wrong. I just think the interesting thing about Lauren and this is to her credit, I guess, is that all of her moves seem to be predicated

on like the POV of the White folks, right? Like this is what they'll do. This is what they'll feel. This is what this is, and I feel that, but there's a large population of the state that is not those people. You know what I'm saying? So, I'm not trying to disagree with Lauren.

She's talking pragmatically. You know what I'm saying? I get it. I feel it. I just can't always be thinking about what the racist white people are going to do. The civil rights movement is over. We started talking about those 2001 town hall videos. It ended when you started trying to put me down.

How, if you watch the whole thing, there's a pattern that emerges. You see a lot of black people dressed in their Sunday best. Let me finish talking, please sir. And making a deliberate point to speak respectfully and calmly. God, I hope God put on my heart to say something that might change somebody's mind. Whereas you see a lot of the white people. I state flag you listen to it. You listen to it over there.

Play it loud. Just yelling. I'm a those racist. That is why I literally had to leave because like, it's humiliating when you always approach these people with that sort of kindness. In the face of them telling you to you better fucking shut the fuck up and watch us commemorate your suffering and we're like, I heard what gentlemen said a few minutes ago about me not being worth a damn. I would just like to, you know what I mean? that's not that's not that don't feel natural to me One of the things that K.A.C. is famous for in Mississippi in addition to his writing is

Forgetting into a major dust up at mills-ups with a bunch of white fraternity boys who dressed up in blackface and Afrowigs and called his girlfriend the N word You talked about what happened to her and friend the N word. In 1963 in the jail, right? Did you ever see that? The Fannie Lou Hamer, is that what you said? Yeah, the Fannie Lou Hamer's speech where she's talking about. I was carried to the county jail and put in the book and rule. Get in arrested in 1963 and how she was in the jail and she does.

You know, she heard other woman down the hall getting beaten. They beat her, I don't know how long. It wasn't too long before three white men came to my fairs. The guards came in and they made black men beat her damn near to death. I laid on my face, the first me grow began to beat. Fuck the, I fucked up her kidneys. And I was beat by the first thing going till he was exposed. I mean, I can't listen to it without crying.

Like, she is talking about white men, putting her in prison, making black, incarcerated men, and beat the fuck out of her to amnesty. All of this is the only kind of we've all to register. Just because she wanted to fucking write the vote. But the wonder to me is that she could comport herself to tell the story. It's just a mouth.

You know what I mean? Like, she was so... The land of the free and the home of the brave. Prepared, even though she's like reaching into like this well, a fucking like horror that she should have never had to experience. It is ancestral, like, people in the face of terror and ultimate fucking humiliation have to comport themselves in particular ways. The wife folks have never, have to do.

And that shit is just foul. You know what I mean? That's why, then at a day I'm just like, fuck it. Yeah, so anyway. Okay, so up until about a month and a half ago, here's where we were at. You had Lauren quietly campaigning, KSA wondering if quiet was the way to go, and you had Tate Reeves, the governor of Mississippi, a guy they both went to school with, and who was actually in that fraternity where the kids wore blackface. The photos show members of the fraternity in blackface,

some holding up a Confederate flag. You had him. This is at the beginning of the pandemic, declaring April Confederate History Month. Meanwhile, in the legislature, conservative Republicans held, still hold a supermajority, all of which is to say that the prospects, a month and a half ago of anything happening quickly,

or at all, with the state flag, were very, very low. But then everything changes. That's after the break. Hi, this is Nailib from Hembroke, Germany. Radio Lab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science and technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at www.sloan.org. This is Radio Lab, I'm Chad Abumrod here with the Schumolei. And we're in the middle of a deep dive into the story behind the removal of the Confederate

Battle Flag, Klad, Mississippi State Flag. Now, as we talked about, just a month and a half ago. Yet a situation where despite Lauren Stennis's best efforts to sneak a new flag into the conversation, despite people like John Hawkins taking a stand against the flag, you had a situation where there was a Republican supermajority in the Senate, a governor who had just declared Confederate heritage month. It seemed like if things were gonna change,

it was gonna happen really slowly, and we'd probably be talking about this for another 126 years. That is until May 25th, 2020. Cities from coast to coast have seen protests of outrage and anger over George Floyd's death. In Mississippi, like everywhere, people hit the streets. And the chance of Black Lives Matter morphed seamlessly into... Take it down. Protesters here in Jackson Rally in front of the Governor's Mansion...

He's the smile, the Confederate emblem flying in my state fire. Mass man! Along with calls for an into police brutality, where citizens calling for changes to our state symbol. Go down! Governor Tade Reeves says, The people of Mississippi made a decision in 2001, an overwhelming decision to maintain the flag.

Go down, go down! He's not planning to take any individual action to take it down. Cut to the Mississippi State House of Representatives. Rep Chris Bell was between sessions. A Republican legislator and I actually passed each other in the hallway. All my way to grab some coffee and she made a statement, you know, look, if you guys are working on trying to get this flag move, I will be able to help out behind the

scene and I say, hey, great. And we started to borrow rolling. It's time for us to do something now soon. Chris and seven other legislators, including Shonda Yates representative district 64 meet in a back room to work up a bill. We are at a point in the

legislature, though, where the deadline to introduce general bills was was months ago. The timing of this was such that in just a few weeks, the entire state capital was all about to go on break for the year. So for this to happen now, we would have to spin the rules, which requires a two-thirds vote. Two-thirds of the House of Representatives and two-thirds of the senators have to vote to allow the rules to be suspended. Mathematically, crazy odds.

But I was vocal about it, but yeah, I think we are finally starting to see a shift to get this changed. So the group sets out to whip some votes, but before they're able to gather even a little bit of momentum, their plans leak and an article hits the press. Saying that, hey, representatives are meeting about this and they're gonna try to change the flag. So the initial media leak was probably untimely. Immediately, there is pushback. And there's representatives that live in rural areas started hearing from their constituents. Hello. Hi, Representative Morgan. Yes. This is Representative Ken Morgan, Republican. He represents a rural area

in Southern Mississippi. Your constituents, what is their voice? About 74% to leave it like it is. I just stopped at a convenience store on my way home and four people in there told me these very words Don't let them change our flag Wow Dang This Chris hi Chris the sashima. Hey, how are you? I also spoke with Senator Chris McDaniel He's been one of the most outspoken critics of changing the flag You know it's funny. It's not really about a flag to me

It's about a philosophical position We're talking about monuments flags, which of course translates into history and we have one side of this debate the left The become increasingly intolerant of diverse u you points increasingly intolerant of other people's opinions. From my perspective, the price we pay to live in a free society is to occasionally be offended. Diversity of you points matter, speech matter, expression matters.

The Aristotle equation doesn't share that opinion any longer. They want uniformity. They won't, you know, formity. They won't, doctrinal, truth. And they are just as guilty of being so blind to diversity that they basically quell it at every turn. I think this is a fight that's left softly for the future of the country. It's not simply about a flag.

It's a position, a mental position. And that's why I think a referendum process would be so important. When you have a referendum, the people are forced into a discussion of the issues. There he expressed the default Republican position. If you wanna change the flag, send it to a vote. That's what we did in 2001, and that's what we should do now.

Does that mean in the Constitution Committee, you think that the bill will be like just killed there? Oh, yeah, it's already dead. Oh really? It's alright. I think it's not the bill's already dead. Turns out just a few days after the bill was introduced. What happened behind the scenes? Hello. And I learned this from another representative. Robert L. Johnson III, Representative District 94.

Is that the Lieutenant Governor Delbert Hoseman, a conservative, did the thing that always happens, the thing that's been happening in one form or another for 120 years. He diverted the baby flag bill to a hostile committee. He sent it to a committee that voted with ultra conservative Republicans. I mean, at the end of the day, the flag passing or not passing is going to turn on whether not Republicans finally wake up and decide if something needs to do. Can you just hold on a second, I'm picking my mother up. And just like that, poof.

There was one day last week, where the colon shit was going to happen. And then the very next day I was like, fuck, it's over. Lauren and I spoke on the phone that day. She was unusually bitter. But I think it's not going to be kind of the hell of a pay situation because I people here have been so fucking horrible, so fucking awful. We talked for a while as protests raged outside of my window in Brooklyn and hers in Jackson, Mississippi.

I told her about something I'd heard in one of my interviews that maybe the only way that the flag will ever come down a Mississippi is if what happened in South Carolina. Top lawmakers there now joining the chorus, calling for it to be removed after last week's shootings at that historic black church happens there i'm horrified at the ball that there's got to be a murder for that we had so many

and i just like i mean i want to have to be crazy or have a discussion no eight days before the end of the legislative session, that's where things stood. Nothing was happening, and nothing was gonna happen. Basically what people wanna do is run out the clock. But then, June 18th.

We begin with breaking news. Breaking news. The SEC is considering withholding title games tonight amid the ongoing flag fight in the state. Enter the mighty voice of college sports. The SEC sound Eastern Congress has made it clear unless Mississippi takes the Confederate flag off. It states flag there we know SEC championships taking place on any campus in Mississippi. That is essentially a divestment practice.

Suddenly the flag debate was on a whole new level. I keep telling people if you want to affect America, you must deal with money. One day later. The NCAA announced it is expanding its Confederate flag policy. The big dog steps in. Banning all championship events from being held in states where the Confederate flag is flown. Mississippi is the only state affected.

From there, a cascade of businesses threatened to divest in a rapid succession. First it was Sanderson Farms, 15,000 employees. Then Walmart says it will no longer have Mississippi state flag in its stores. Walmart, 23,000 employees. Same day, the Mississippi Baptist Convention said something similar. Mississippi Baptist Convention, more than half a million members.

In light of our understanding of his teaching, Jesus Christ, I am compelled to words, the largest slager, to change our state flag. I'll do so. That's you. I help on the phone with Lauren to review this new progress. There's a statement that I can forge you that our lieutenant governor just wrote.

Here's a thing I talked to a senator today who said, um, there are 10 votes away. She showed me tweets of her flag waving at BLM protests and then we talked about all the businesses that have just put up her flag in the past few days. Whitney Banks is a big presence on the coast is putting up a centissant banner as soon as it gets back from the printer and the huge gothic Samuel of something it's the tallest building downtown who amar like building in Jackson they needed 10 by 15 flags and we had to order it outside of the NBC headquarters there's a flag of yours. Yeah, did you see that? Picture that? No. Two days to the deadline. You've had a couple legislators who have come

out on the right side of history. Chris Bell and Shonda Yates tell me that they've inched forward just a little bit. We're hoping that the momentum will grow over the weekend. Hey, this is Chris. I'm sorry I couldn't answer the phone. Also tried Senator Chris McDaniel a few times. I think a message and I'll get right back to you. The mailbox is full. Goodbye. Momentum is building to change Mississippi state flag, even as the legislative session winds down.

The House Democratic Minority Leader say they are about one to do votes away from getting some movement going around this time with team change still a few votes short and just a few days left to the deadline. Republicans brought out the two flag. There's been an idea floated about adopting a second co-equal flag. Keep our current flag and also have a new flag. Kind of separate but equal flags. That's not even up. That's not up

for debate. It's a weird idea for me to wrap my head around. On the eve of the deadline, seemed like things had suddenly stalled. Suddenly all the senators weren't returning my calls. Meanwhile, Lauren was getting attacked online. A few members of the Mississippi Black Lives Matter movement started publicly saying that the new flag should be designed by a black person and should not bear the name of a segregationist. Well, I met with some folks who are with Black Lives Matter and it was really helpful to realize in person in dialogue how much of a roadblock the association or even just the perceived association with my grandfather was. I mean, you have to kind of realize how hard this is to happen in Mississippi.

And it's kind of absurd and crazy, but all the planets were lining and then all the sudden, it became, my last name became this huge issue. And I'm like, well, I'm getting the hell out of the way because this needs to happen. She ended up posting a statement online. Well, I'm getting the hell out of the way because this needs to happen. She ended up posting a statement online. Can you read it to me? Yes. Dear friends, Mississippi will soon know all the benefits and joy that come with having

a state flag that is evocative, not provocative. Working hard for six years toward that goal has been one of the best experiences of my life. In a continued effort to be of service, I'll be stepping away from this endeavor as I understand the hurt and potential harm a last name can cause. But I will always continue to fight for Mississippi and her people, which I consider both a duty and a joy. Mississippi needs and deserves a new flag. Help make it so. Lauren. That's kind of heartbreaking. No, it's it's it's good. It's alright. Breaking this morning, Lauren Stennis, the creator of a popular alternative to the state

flag, says she's stepping away from her endeavor. Her grandfather was Ua Senator John Stennis, who served Mississippi on Capitol Hill for 41 years. Now it's come to order. Police stand is related in prayer today by guest minister to be introduced by the lady from Harrison or main standing there for the plate. Saturday, June 27, 2020. State legislators finally meet to vote on the flag. Minutes before I get a series of frantic texts from Shonda Yates. Shima, it's now. Looks like it's not happening. It's on. Honestly, I have no idea.

Thank you, Father, for Mississippi. Session begins with a prayer. We ask you and besiege you that you would be in their hearts, that what is in their heart would transfer to their mind. They may do the things that are pleasing unto God for the good of all Mississippians and even our country. Forgive us of our sins, we pray, amen. Then? Pledge, please. Appropriately enough.

Everybody faces a big American flag next to it. The 1894 Mississippi State Flag, the Confederate one, and they pledged their allegiance. Maybe for the last time. Maybe not. In the audience you can see a few black representatives are wearing masks. One has the words take it down written on his and another has the number 846 printed on his. After that, speeches. The tenor of the speeches reminded me of reading John and Abigail Adams' letters, how

they would write in this way where they knew that we would be reading their letters. Hundreds of years later. History will be made here today. I will know exactly where I was on this day. There was that same awareness here. you and I watch the news and on each channel they were talking about the vote on Mississippi's flag. That's on national news. The international news is there too. It is so because of what that flag stands for. We had a few minutes of debate. We want to take the joy away from them. We heard the arguments. We as a body want to take that from them. I appreciate your position

that is not the position of this body here today. At times during these debates. And I understand that. Good. My luck. Things got a little testy. And I'm not trying to be argumentative with you either. I'm either.

I remember watching Senator Christmas Daniel. The American flag being burned. That really bothered me. I didn't understand why someone would do something like that. The symbols seemed so pure, so innocent. And so I asked my father, I said, why are they burning this flag? And he said, well, sign it's complicated. His closing shot was a story about his dad.

A how his dad taught him that flags, just like the people they represent, are complicated. And we should embrace that, not erase it. This is a tough decision. It's a very tough decision. You know it's tough. It's hard. But this is why you're elected to be in these positions. After that? So now Senator, we have a motion. Use the morning roll call.

The moment of truth. Motion, I'll use the morning roll call. Is anyone object to procedure? Now to be honest, there are actually two two votes one in the house in the senate we're going to focus in on the senate that's what you're hearing because that's the vote that really counts roll call is that what you're most used if you're called they needed a two-thirds majority to suspend the rules in

order to move forward if they get that majority it's effectively a vote to change the flag which means they need thirty out of 52 votes. Mr. Clerk. Barnett, Blackwell, Blunt, Bowie, Brandy, Brian Butler, Carter. The clerk calls the 50 senators one by one. They do a voice vote. Simmons of the 12. Simmons of the 13. Sojourner. Spars. Then he reads the tally. First the yeas.

Voting yes or ye. Barnett, black, when black will blunt. Boy, Brian, but the Carter, the bar, Delano, Doty, England, Frazier, Harkins, Hopson Horn, Jackson of 15, Jackson of 11, Jackson of 32nd. Then the Nays. Voting Noir, Nay, Brandy, Kaufman, Chads and all, Chisholm, Phillingain, Heel, Johnson, McCaw, McDaniel, McLindon, Seymour, Sojourner, Spark, Subur, and Wabley. Then there is a two-minute silence where it seems like there are some recounts.

Again, they need to get to 35 out of 52 votes. Watching this on the stream at this point, I'm thinking if there are these recounts, that probably means they don't have it. About a vote of 36 to 14, the motion passes. This is what I asked for immediate release. So you know, objection immediate release is granted. For 126 years, the Mississippi State flag had the Confederate flag on it. But no longer. Just watched it. Here.

Shonda Yates. The old flag is fine. All the high work is paid off. Robert Johnson. People get to see Mississippi for who they really are. It was the victor for all of us. Chris Bell. Mississippi is ready to enter the global market.

Hail, can you say I voted not to change this, I think Yeah. Oh my gosh. Did you watch? I did. I saw it. And John Hawkins, where it all began. I was watching you with my son, my 18 year old son, who's headed to the University of Kentucky in the fall. I'm not sure he fully understood the gravity of the moment. in the fall. But I'm not sure he fully understood the gravity of the moment. John has handed to us that he might now finally move back to Mississippi. And perhaps politics will be in this future. Now, as for how they got the vote, because remember they came into the day a few votes shy, turns out the thing that pushed them over the edge was quite literally god at the very last minute a few republicans agreed to vote to remove the old flag

only if the new flag had the words in god we trust on it to know where that came from well that the well we still live in a conservative state and part of part of what uh... it took to get uh... people to cross that line of voting to take the Confederate

flag down to give them some alternatives that they could go sail to the traditionalist out there and they want that on their flag. Seeing the way it all played out, was that bittersweet from your perspective? I think that's a good way to put it. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, wow, we got the current flag down, the 1894 flag down. And so, have been celebrating that for sure. A few days later, Governor Tate Reeves, he of the Blackface Battle Flag Loving Fertunity signed the bill into law. It is an amazing historical moment to be witnessing this. The last time the Mississippi State flag

raised at the Mississippi State Capitol, now lowered, never to be raised again. And then all 1894 flags were officially removed from all state buildings. But, you know, in true fashion, we have made the replacement the most complicated procedure ever. Of course the process. Now as they do this, they now name soon the 9 member commission who will be in task with the process of finding a flag design. For the moment, Mississippi, which used to be the only state in the Union with the Confederate battle flag on it, is now the only state in the Union without a flag at all. And I just think it's amazing that that Mississippi and did something radical. It's radical to be a state without a flag. You know what I'm saying? Like that, that's not like this radical to be like, you know what? We don't have a fucking flag right now. So we gonna have to build some shit together.

This is the beginning. We ain't the end. But right now I'm not gonna think about that right now. I'm just gonna be happy. I'm gonna be real happy for this weekend. There's something I never thought would see happen. Something my branding never thought would see happen. You know, so it's not the end but it's a victory and I think going forward like my utopia would be like the the Lauren and a lot of other

brilliant, thoughtful, loving people were central to the design of the new flag. Like, you know, how do we share and do right by the best of Mississippi? The best of Mississippi. Two quick post scripts from what we understand orders of the Confederate flag have apparently shot through the roof in Mississippi and second just this week in the wake of the flag proceedings, we learn that 26 legislatures have tested positive for COVID. This episode was brought to you through a collaboration between Osomodo and Radio Lab. It was produced and imported by Shim Oliai with production assistants from Annie McEwen and Bethel Hoppe.

Thanks also to Kiesa Leimon, author of Heavy, a great memoir, definitely recommend. To Tat Davis, Ray Hawkins, Rory Doyle, Kaden McKee, Adam Gannishow, Kaley Skinner, Jockem Oblonia, Luke Ramseth, and Sarah Fowler. I'm Chad Abumran, thanks for listening. This is Eddie Coyne from Hoverbot, Australia. Radio Lab is created by Chad Abumran with Robert Quowich and produced by Sorn Wheeler. Feeling Keith is our director of Stam Design, Sue Eurasian burgers are executive producer. I saw from Rav with Robert Kroich and produced by Sauron Wheeler. Dealing Keith is our director of sound design. Suzy Leccian burgers are executive producer.

A soft includes Simon Adler, Becca Brasla, Rachel Kuzik, David Giebel, Bethel Habtie, Tracy Hunt, Matt Kielty, Anima Cune, Latif Nassau, Sarah Curry, Aryan Wack, Pat Wolters, and Molly Webster. With help from Sheema Oliiri, W. Harry Puccino, Sarah Sandback, Melissa O'Donnell, Todd Davis, and Russell Greg. A fact checker is Michelle Harris.