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Flags find new home in the Museum of Mississippi History

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Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Director Katherine Blount and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann deliver the flags to the museum. (Photo source: WLBT video screen grab)

Wednesday, July 1, Mississippi permanently retired three state flags bearing Confederate symbolism in ceremonies at the Mississippi State Capitol.

First adopted in 1894 at the dawn of the Jim Crow era in the South, three state flags flew over the Capitol, one each over the House and Senate chambers and a third outside the building on the south side of the building.

A crowd watched honor guards from the Mississippi Highway Patrol and National Guard take down and carefully fold each of the three flags, then presenting them to House Speaker Philip Gunn, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and Mississippi Department of Archives and History Director Katherine Blount.

The flags were then transported in a motorcade sirens and flashing lights a few blocks to the Museum of Mississippi History, where one of the flags will be displayed. The other two will be in the permanent collection of MDAH.

The Mississippi Legislature passed a bill Sunday, June 28, to remove the flag, and Gov. Tate Reeves signed it into law June 30.

”This is not an end, but it is a beginning,” Gunn said during the ceremony at the museum. “Now we turn to a new chapter in our state’s history. Let us walk into the future together and if we do that, there’s no limit to what we can achieve.”

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