Growing up in Milford, Connecticut, I never really experienced true Southern heritage.
I have family in Alabama and Texas, and I visited the two states many times to see family when I was younger. I was too young and naive to see my surroundings in Southern scenery.
I knew one thing. I wanted to live in the South. I fell in love with the culture, the people, the accents and the weather. That’s when I knew I wanted to attend college in the South. So my freshman year, I decided to attend the University of Alabama.
I went to a fraternity rush party my second day of college and I saw a giant Confederate flag painted on the basement wall. I asked one of the brothers why they had it painted on the wall. They scolded me and laughed in my face.
I never felt so uncomfortable in my life.
From an outsider’s perspective, I had never seen a Confederate flag until then. I was appalled at the sight of it when I went to the fraternity party, and I wanted to leave.
Coming to Ole Miss in 2013, I noticed the stars and bars plastered in the upper left-hand corner of the state flag. I’ve heard Mississippi natives say the flag is a tradition and ‘It’s what I grew up with. Why would they change it?’
It’s not just the state of Mississippi to which the stigma is attached. It’s the University of Mississippi. Colonel Reb is no longer our mascot; the image of the old white man dressed in a red suit with a cane in one hand and the other hand stroking his bushy mustache no longer exists.
That was the first step in making the university more progressive. The next step needs to be changing the flag.
They stars and bars have no place being on the Mississippi state flag. If the state of Mississippi wants to be more progressive and get rid of the racist stigma that surrounds the state, the ASB should elect to get rid of the state flag and change it immediately.
