Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi Sparks Controversy

JACKSON, Miss.--Confederate Heritage Month draws to a close this week in Mississippi, where residents remain divided over the contentious commemoration. In February -- during Black History Month -- Gov. Phil Bryant made national news by proclaiming April a time to recognize "the month in which the Confederate States began and ended a four year struggle."

It is not the first time Confederate Heritage Month has been observed in the state, but it is perhaps the most tense and controversial celebration yet.

After a white gunman murdered nine people at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina, last year, authorities recovered photos of him holding the Confederate flag. It reignited widespread debate about the flag's significance, with some insisting it is a testament to Southern history and the lives lost defending its values, while others called it a racist symbol of a system that propagated slavery and other forms of state-sponsored violence against Americans.

Mississippi is the only state in the nation to have the Confederate flag depicted in its state flag, which still hangs in front of some official buildings and homes. Both opponents and supporters see Confederate Heritage Month and the controversy over the state flag to be inextricably linked.

Marc Allen, the public affairs officer for the Sons of Confederate Veterans' Mississippi chapter, is a fervent supporter of Confederate Heritage Month. Speaking from his office in the basement of Jackson's War Memorial Building , Allen said Americans villainize the Confederacy because they are poorly educated about the root causes of the Civil War.

Slavery was not the primary issue driving Mississippi's role in the "war between the states," Allen says. "The issue was the amount of money that was being taken from Southern states in the form of tariffs and taxes."

And about that state flag: Allen says it's the "1894 Reconciliation flag," a representation of the merging of the North and the South after the war's end. Ask Allen about the portrait of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and the first grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, that hangs in his office, and he'll tell you that Forrest's aims and actions were misunderstood.

Allen's views have supporters across Mississippi. In Hattiesburg, a group gathers every Sunday to protest the removal of the state flag from the University of Southern Mississippi campus. They've been protesting there since October, and say they'll protest until USM President Rodney Bennett hoists the flag once again. The only thing that could prevent the group from gathering would be "sleet or snow, and we don't get those in Mississippi," says Don Parker, an attendee from nearby Purvis.

On a windy day in March, the group flew dozens of state flags outside of the University. "Confederate Heritage Month means pro-America," says Robert Ulmer, a pawn shop owner. He added: "Some people ask me what I think about black history. I don't think much about it."

"Ninety percent are with us, and 10 percent are against us," says Joe Waites of the steady stream cars that honked their horns as they drove by.

Kimberly Craven, an accounting student with green streaks in her hair, said Confederate Heritage Month had come under greater scrutiny in direct response to the flag controversy. Like Allen, members of the group said opposition to Confederate symbolism was based on poor information. "History is written by the victors," Craven said with a shrug.

Some members of the all-white group were eager to offer their own backgrounds in pre-emptive response to perceptions of white supremacy. One member said he was half-Greek, another said she had Native American ancestors.

"White heritage or confederate heritage; I don't know anything about it, but why not have it?" asked Frankie Graham, a soft-spoken man in nearby Collins, who works at a chicken-processing plant. "[Minority groups] got all their other heritage this-and-that. What's wrong with it?"

But there are also many in the state who believe there is something wrong with it, and some even live in Graham's neighborhood.

Collins is a rural town, dotted with single-story clapboard houses that sit unfenced in easy relation to one another. To residents, every building is easily recognizable: down the road is an uncle's house with a stuffed deer in the window, next door is the hospital that used to boast a poster of a local beauty queen's beatific face.

It's a surprising place for Vicar Susan Hrostowski, an openly gay Episcopal priest and one of Confederate Heritage Month's staunchest opponents, to set up shop. But from a pew in her tiny church, she spoke openly about the cruelty of the commemoration and the flag's traumatic symbolism for black

Mississippians.

Olye Shirley, a former educator, has been collecting newspaper clippings she considers racist since the 1980s, particularly those that feature the Confederate flag or the Mississippi state flag. "It doesn't represent me; I pay taxes, I live here, and I should be represented as well," Shirley said. When asked about Confederate Heritage Month, Shirley responded: "Well I say, you know you lost the war. Why are you so proud of it?"

"Why in 2016 are we dedicating an entire month to celebrate Confederate Heritage in a slave state? In the black community, we're outraged. We're like why are you doing this, and how can we stop it?" agreed Erin Orey, a Jackson-based project manager. "I got it; your great-great-grandfather died in the war. Do you agree with why he died? Do you agree with why he fought in the war? Do you agree that slavery should be in existence today; that it should be legal? Do you agree with all of those things? That's where we disconnect."

Her sentiment was echoed by Nolan Rack, a Los Angeles-based activist who flew to Mississippi on behalf of the group Black Matters. Hack arrived a few days before the protest he was organizing in Jackson so he could visit Clarksdale, a city in the Delta best known for its blues music.

"This flag is a microcosm of everything [Mississippi] fell asleep on," he says. "Black people have been stepped on time and time again." More than 50 people came to the capitol building for the protest Rack organized. They held signs that read "White Silence = White Consent," "#NotMyHeritage" and "Ban the racist flag."

Many of those who have moved away look on with dismay at the news from their home state: lead-contaminated water in February, a Representative's indignant letter to his constituent in March, an anti-LGBT bill that passed in April. Confederate Heritage Month was just one in a list of frustrations for some former residents.

Scott Varnado, a 29-year-old whose family has lived in Hattiesburg for six generations, says he compartmentalizes news from home now that he's living in Los Angeles. "Family members send me links saying, 'Can you believe this s--t is happening?' I choose not to focus energy on the things that upset me."

But Craven, one of the pro-flag protestors, advises those living outside Mississippi to reserve their judgment. "I don't think it's any of their business what we do in our state," she says

Confederate Heritage Month "would not even be an issue if people weren't coming from out of state raising sand about this," Allen, the public affairs officer, agrees. "If they go home, and go away, and quit, this [controversy] will die a very quiet death."