It’s Confederate Heritage Month again in Mississippi. Why Gov. Reeves is defending the proclamation

JACKSON, Miss — Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves is defending his choice to once more identify April as Accomplice Heritage Month, practically two years after he signed a regulation retiring the final state flag within the U.S. that featured a Accomplice battle emblem.

The Republican governor signed a proclamation with out fanfare Friday. It doesn’t point out slavery — the protection of which was Mississippi’s acknowledged motive for making an attempt to secede from the U.S.

In response to a query at a information convention Wednesday, Reeves stated he issued a Accomplice Heritage Month proclamation “in the identical method and trend that the 5 governors that got here earlier than me, Republicans and Democrats alike, for over 30 years have performed.”

“And we did it once more this yr,” Reeves stated. “Did not suppose this was the yr to cease doing it.”

4 governors earlier than Reeves — not 5 — issued Accomplice Heritage Month proclamations. By state regulation, Mississippi additionally has a Accomplice Heritage Day in April, which is a vacation for state workers.

Mississippi has taken steps lately to distance itself from symbols of the Confederacy, together with eradicating some monuments, with critics saying the photographs glorify racism in a state the place practically 40% of residents are Black. In June 2020, Mississippi legislators voted with bipartisan help to retire the Accomplice-themed state flag, and voters that November authorised a brand new flag that includes a magnolia.

Reeves’s workplace didn’t announce his signing of the newest Accomplice Heritage Month proclamation. The Mississippi Free Press was the primary to report {that a} Sons of Accomplice Veterans chapter on Monday had a social media submit exhibiting it. Reeves has issued an analogous proclamation annually since turning into governor in January 2020.

Reeves’s proclamation says “we honor all who misplaced their lives on this struggle” and “it is vital for all People to replicate upon our nation’s previous, to realize perception from our errors and successes, and to return to a full understanding that the teachings discovered yesterday and right now will carry us by way of tomorrow if we rigorously and earnestly attempt to grasp our heritage and our alternatives which lie earlier than us.”

Mississippi’s secession ordinance in 1861 stated: “Our place is totally recognized with the establishment of slavery — the best materials curiosity of the world.”

Former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus, a Democrat who held the workplace from 1988 to 1992, didn’t problem a Accomplice Heritage Month proclamation, and he criticized Reeves for doing so.

“His ‘Accomplice Heritage Month’ proclamation appears like he is endorsing important race idea: study from the previous and many others,” Mabus wrote Tuesday on Twitter. “Heritage of Confederacy is treason and slavery. We should always study from these issues simply possibly not in method he imagines.”

Observe Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter: http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

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