Republican committee chairs give little response on moving bills forward

Ever since Lexington’s District 47 Rep. Bryant Clark had been coming to the Mississippi State Capitol as a child and later as a lawmaker, symbols of the old Confederacy had loomed on flag poles, hallway corners and the very ceiling of the building.

Clark, whose father Robert was the first Black state legislator elected in the 20^th century, told the Clarion Ledger some of those symbols went unnoticed to him and several others until this year.

Other vestiges were also placed by the state nearly 100 years ago in Washington, D.C.’s Statuary Hall, displaying Confederate figures Jefferson Davis and James Z. George. The Kentucky-born Davis, a former U.S. Senator representing Mississippi, was most famous as the President of the Confederate States of America. George was a Confederate politician and military officer and the namesake of Mississippi’s George County.

Now, Clark and several other legislators have filed bills to either replace a painting of two generals raising a Confederate battle flag with the state’s current flag of a magnolia flower or remove it entirely. Other bills filed by State Senators Derrick Simmons and David Blount, both Democrats serving Greenville and Jackson respectively, would aim to replace the two statues in Washington, D.C.

“I’ve been here 21 years and quite honestly, I had never seen that until Sen. Bradford Blackmon had brought it to my attention,” Clark said. “All citizens have embraced the (new) flag, and I think it would be the ideal symbol to replace the Confederate picture with the Mississippi flag.”

Another legacy lawmaker, Blackmon, D-Lexington, who replaced his father Edward Blackmon this year in the Senate, said he filed a bill to replace the painting in the Capitol’s rotunda ceiling, which also displays other religious and historical images. He too had never noticed the painting.That bill, SB 2217, would direct the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to remove the painting and create a commission consisting of governor appointments, the director of the MDAH, a member of the Mississippi Arts Commission and several lawmakers, to decide what should replace it.“Coming off a few years removed from taking down the state flag with the battle emblem inside of it, there’s a lot more representations of Mississippi that can go up there, and that’s what led me to draft a bill,” said Blackmon.

Blount and Simmons both said they would vote for Blackmon’s bill, but they are heavily focused on lobbying to create a commission of their own to replace Davis and George with more modern representations of Mississippi.

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“There are a number of changes that need to be made in Mississippi,” Blount said. “It’s a problem.”

Senate President Pro Tem. Dean Kirby, R- Pearl, who chairs the Rules Committee where both Senate bills were sent, told the Clarion Ledger he has spoken with Blackmon, and he will consider bringing his bill forward.

“It’s definitely something I will discuss with my committee,” Kirby said.

Since Kirby took over the Rules Committee in 2020, no bills regarding the removal of Confederate paintings or statues or the establishing of commissions to discuss them have made it out of his committee.

According to MDAH records, when the current State Capitol was built in the early 1900s, the original ceiling did not include depictions of the confederate battle flag. The building was later renovated and restored in the 1980s, a project that cost the state $19 million, according to MDAH records.

In 2021, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, signed legislation to replace the state’s former flag, which also depicted the stars and bars of the Army of Northern Virginia battle flag flown during the Civil War, with one showing a magnolia flower.

The traditional Confederate battle flag never flew over Mississippi as a state flag during the Civil War. Mississippi’s flag in that era featured a magnolia tree as its dominant symbol.

Over in the in the Mississippi House of Representatives, Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, told the Clarion Ledger he is sponsoring a bill to replace the two statues as well, but instead of creating a commission to oversee the replacement, he is asking the legislature to approve placing famous civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Hiram Revels, the first Black man in the United States Senate.

“Those two Confederate leaders, I don’t think are appropriate representations of the state of Mississippi, and I think we ought to have some statues of people who represent how we move forward,” Johnson said.

However, these pieces of legislation may be falling on deaf ears.

Johnson said he had spoken with first year House Speaker Jason White, R-West, about his bill and that White responded positively toward the idea.

Friday morning, White’s Communications Officer Taylor Spillman said he had no such meeting. White declined to comment on whether he would support removing the painting in the rotunda or replacing Davis and George in Washington D.C.

“We are focusing on education and Medicaid right now,” Spillman said.

Johnson’ bill, House Concurrent Resolution 12, was sent to the Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Fred Shanks, R-Brandon.

When asked to speak on the bills introduced by Johnson and Clark, who also serves as his vice chair, Shanks declined to comment.

Sen. Walter Michel, R-Ridgeland, who vice chairs the Senate Rules Committee, said he would not vote to replace the paintings in the Capitol building.

“I’m not interested in moving that,” Michel said. “I like it, it looks good. It’s a beautiful painting up on top of the ceiling of the rotunda so I’m not interested in moving that bill.”

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Grant McLaughlin covers state government for the Clarion Ledger. He can be reached at gmclaughlin@gannett.com or 972-571-2335.