Tuesday April 17 11:48 PM ET
Mississippi Keeps Confederate Symbol in Landslide

By Alan Elsner, National Correspondent

JACKSON, Miss. (Reuters) - Mississippi voters overwhelmingly approved a measure on Tuesday to keep the Confederate flag in a prominent place on the state banner, rejecting a design that would have removed an emblem widely seen as a symbol of slavery and racism.

In official returns, with 67 percent of precincts reporting, 65 percent voted to retain the old flag, which supporters revere as a symbol of southern heritage, while 35 percent voted for the new design.

In raw numbers, 311,573 had voted for the old flag; 165,456 for the new. Local media declared the old flag the winner. Remaining results from remote counties were not expected to substantially change the vote and might not be reported in full until Wednesday.

Mississippi's population is about 61 percent white and 36 percent black. There was no racial breakdown of the vote but predominantly black counties voted heavily for the new design while mostly white precincts went overwhelmingly -- by as much as 90 percent in some cases -- for the old.

Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat who had supported the new flag, said in a written statement: ``It is important that we accept the majority vote and move forward. ... We must lay aside our differences.''

The referendum had been called to determine whether Mississippi would remain the last state to prominently display the Confederate battle emblem on its official flag. In recent years, Alabama, South Carolina and Georgia have either dropped or downgraded their use of the symbol.

It was the first time voters anywhere had a chance to decide the flag issue. Despite the emotions involved, both sides agreed the campaign had been orderly and civil.

Mississippi could now face the kind of economic boycott from blacks and others that forced South Carolina last year to move a Confederate flag that had flown over the state Capitol to a less
prominent location.

The result was also a defeat for Musgrove and black leaders who backed the new design. It showed that the legacy of the Civil War, slavery and segregation continues to exert a powerful hold in a state whose most celebrated author, William Faulkner, once declared, ``The past is never dead.''

Jackson State University political scientist Leslie McLemore said the campaign had stirred deep-seated racial resentment and hatred that would be difficult to heal.

Mississippi adopted its flag with the Confederate battle emblem, a blue cross with 13 white stars in the left-hand corner, in 1894, almost 30 years after the Confederacy lost the 1861-1865 Civil War.

For decades after the war, blacks were denied basic civil rights and subjected to constant intimidation and frequent lynchings. The state continued its policy of racial segregation well
into the 1960s.

Issues from that era remain very much alive. State Attorney General Mike Moore is still pursuing leads in hope of bringing to trial those accused of the 1964 murders of three civil rights workers.

Flag supporters dismissed those who see the emblem as a banner of slavery and Ku Klux Klan violence. More recently, it has been adopted by neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists. Many southern whites regard the flag as a glorious symbol of a heritage they are unwilling to abandon and say it has nothing to do with slavery.

John Thomas Cripps, a potential Republican candidate for governor, summed up the pro-flag argument in fiery and emotional terms.

``We proclaim before Almighty God and before all nations of the earth, that we are a separate and distinct people, with an honorable heritage and culture worthy of protection and preservation,'' he said.

The proposed new flag would have replaced the southern cross with 20 stars in concentric circles, representing that Mississippi was the 20th state to join the United States.

Many state and business leaders, including Musgrove, supported the new design, arguing that Mississippi, one of the poorest states in the country with serious health, education and economic problems, needed to leave its racist legacy behind to compete effectively for jobs.

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