NewsMax.com
Tuesday, November 21, 2000

According to a report by Fox News:

After weeks of controversy at public meetings in Jackson, Tupelo, Moorhead, Gulfport and Meridian, a panel appointed by Gov. Ronnie Musgrove is no closer to a solution.

Indeed, it seems ever further from it as discussions have turned ugly in a state that prides itself on Southern civility.

The emotional meetings included scripture reading, veterans' stories about patriotism and reports of racial attacks by Ku Klux Klan members waving the rebel flag.

The division is the same as in other states of the old Confederacy: Is the Dixie flag a symbol of black slavery and white-supremacy racism or an incontrovertible relic of the region's rich history that should be preserved.

Arguments, often angry, run like this:

"We need to either put it in a museum or bury it," said flag opponent Boyd James at the final hearing last week.

Supporter Thomas Logue said changing the flag could lead to altering other Confederate monuments and county names.

"If you want me to appreciate your history," he told blacks opposing the flag, "then you must appreciate our history."

The 17-member governor's commission, led by a former Mississippi governor, William Winter, a Democrat who served on President Clinton's Presidential Advisory Board on Race, is supposed to make its recommendation to the state legislature early next year.

Winter doubts it will be able to reach an agreement.

"I'm aware of the deeply held feelings about the flag on both sides," he said.

"That was what we were attempting to evaluate – what the basis for public opinion in the state was, how they viewed it, how they thought we might be able to resolve it in a manner that will not be divisive."

Jack Reed of Tupelo, a panel member, said he was disappointed by the hostility at the hearings.

"We haven't had the degree of civility that I know we should have had," he said. "It's been so adversarial that I think it's discouraged people who've come to the meetings from speaking.

"One of the things that's unfortunate, and this is no great surprise, is it's evolved really so much along racial lines. Because there are a lot of good people who are not racist who want to keep the flag, but their voices have not been heard."