Mississippi

Mississippi Governor Declares April Confederate Heritage Month

Published

12 months ago

April 21, 2025

Mississippi Governor Declares April Confederate Heritage Month

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has declared April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, keeping alive a 32-year-old tradition that began in 1993.

A member of the Rankin Greys, a Sons of Confederate Veterans camp based in Florence, Mississippi, announced the proclamation in a post in the organization’s Facebook group on April 18.

The SCV annually asks governors to issue the Confederate Heritage Month proclamations.

“Whereas, as we honor all who lost their lives in this war, it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us,” says the governor’s proclamation, which is dated April 17.

“Now, therefore, I, Tate Reeves, Governor of the State of Mississippi, hereby proclaim the month of April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in the State of Mississippi.”

The SCV is a neo-Confederate organization that espouses “Lost Cause” ideology, which promotes a revisionist version of history that whitewashes the Confederacy’s racist past and downplays the role of slavery in the Civil War. SCV owns and operates Beauvoir, the museum and historic home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis; the organization annually receives $100,000 from the State of Mississippi for development and maintenance.

Starting in 2016, Donna Ladd, then the editor of the Jackson Free Press and now the executive editor of the Mississippi Free Press, first reported on then-Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant’s Confederate Heritage Month proclamations. The Mississippi Free Press has reported on each of Reeves’ annual proclamations, including in 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024.

Each year, the Confederate Heritage Month proclamations appear on SCV Facebook pages, but neither the governor nor any other state official publicizes the proclamations or posts them on any public-facing state websites or social-media pages.

Reeves defended issuing the proclamations in 2021.

“For the last 30 years, five Mississippi governors—Republicans and Democrats alike—have signed a proclamation recognizing the statutory state holiday and identifying April as Confederate Heritage Month,” the governor’s office said in a statement to WAPT at the time. “Gov. Reeves also signed the proclamation because he believes we can all learn from our history.”

The governor’s annual proclamation routinely notes that state law designates the last Monday in April as Confederate Memorial Day. However, state law does not require governors to issue Confederate Heritage Month proclamations.

‘Thoroughly Identified With the Institution of Slavery’

After Kirk Fordice became Mississippi’s first Republican governor in a century while courting the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens and criticizing efforts to atone for the state’s racist past, he issued the inaugural Confederate Heritage Month proclamation at the request of the Sons of Confederate Veterans in 1993.

Since then, one Democratic governor and three Republican governors have followed Fordice’s lead.

Despite issuing Confederate Heritage Month proclamations annually for his first seven years in office between 2011 and 2018, former Gov. Bryant did not issue one in 2019, his last year in office; he opted instead for a “Month of Unity” proclamation on behalf of a Christian religious organization.

The language in Reeves’ Confederate Heritage Month proclamations uses much of the same language as the one that former Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, who served from 2000 to 2004, issued in April 2000.

In 2023, Musgrove told the Mississippi Free Press that Confederate Heritage Month is “something that should not continue in today’s world.”

“I cannot say why the practice started, but it was one that should never have been started,” the former governor said. “It was one that I should not have signed, and it should have ended a long time ago.”

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Former Mississippi Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (left), Haley Barbour (second from right) and Phil Bryant (right) all issued Confederate Heritage Month proclamations. They are seen here at the groundbreaking for the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Miss., on Oct. 24, 2013, with civil rights leader Myrlie Evers (center) and former Gov. William Winter (second from left), who served before the Confederate Heritage Month tradition began. AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Former Republican Gov. Haley Barbour also signed Confederate Heritage Month proclamations every year between 2004 and 2016.

Though Confederate Heritage groups like SCV promote a whitewashed version of the South’s role in the Civil War that has often made its way into textbooks in the state and throughout the country, the historical record makes clear that slavery was the primary cause of the Union’s split and the subsequent Civil War.

“Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery—the greatest material interest of the world,” Mississippi’s 1861 Declaration of Secession said. “Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.”

Reeves’ ties to the SCV stretch back long before his time as governor. In 2013, he spoke to the SCV’s national gathering in Vicksburg, Mississippi, in front of a massive Confederate battle flag and in a room decorated with smaller Confederate flags and cotton plants. After then-Lt. Gov. Reeves congratulated the organization for “keeping history for our youth,” speakers defended the Confederate “cause” and compared “Yankees” to German “Nazis” in World War II.

Long before entering politics, Reeves was part of a Millsaps College fraternity known for Confederate-themed parties where members wore blackface and for lionizing Confederate General Robert E. Lee. When it became an issue in his 2019 campaign for governor, though, he said he never participated in blackface during his time in the fraternity.

Reeves’ Democratic opponent at the time, then-Attorney General Jim Hood, was also in a fraternity at the University of Mississippi, where members wore blackface; he similarly denied ever participating.

Reeves Denied Existence of ‘Systemic Racism’

In the decades after the Civil War ended, Confederate veterans, such as Mississippi State University inaugural President Stephen D. Lee, and groups like SCV began the work of remaking history in a way that shone a more favorable light on the South—muddying the waters over the cause of the war and falsely describing it as a “war of northern aggression.”

After the Civil War and the failure of Reconstruction, Mississippi’s white leaders worked to enshrine white supremacy in state law, adopting a Jim Crow state constitution in 1890 (including a racist felony voter-disenfranchisement provision that remains in state law and continues to disproportionately disenfranchise Black voters). White supremacist leaders in Mississippi renewed efforts to enshrine Confederate heritage in the 1950s and 1960s in reaction to the rise of the Civil Rights Movement.

Mississippi’s Confederate-themed 1894 state flag flew over state buildings until 2020, when state lawmakers voted to retire and replace it following decades of efforts by Black Mississippians and in the wake of young Black Mississippians leading protests after the murder of George Floyd. Despite his campaign pledge not to use his power to change the flag, Gov. Reeves signed the bill retiring the old flag, calling it “a law to turn a page in Mississippi today.”

“It is fashionable in some quarters to say our ancestors were all evil. I reject that notion. I also reject the elitist worldview that these United States are anything but the greatest nation in the history of mankind. I reject the mobs tearing down statues of our history—north and south, Union and Confederate, founding fathers and veterans,” the governor said in 2020, criticizing Black Lives Matter protesters from across the country even as he signed the bill. “I reject the chaos and lawlessness, and I am proud it has not happened in our state.”

Even though his state had only just removed the emblem of the Confederacy from atop the Capitol building, Reeves continued to deny the lasting effects of the state’s white supremacist history. In 2021, he told Fox News that “there is not systemic racism in America”—contradicting mountains of evidence, including the vestiges of Jim Crow that remain in force in Mississippi law like the state’s 1890 voter disenfranchisement law.

Then, in 2022, Reeves signed a so-called “critical race theory ban” into law, which is a misnomer because, despite its legislative title, the law neither mentions nor describes critical race theory. As he signed the bill, the governor claimed that “critical race theory is running amok,” despite the fact that the lawmakers who drafted it admitted that they did not know of any public K-12 schools where the academic theory is taught.

The Mississippi governor also painted critical race theory, which addresses systemic racial inequalities in the legal system and throughout society, as a tool of indoctrination that is used to “humiliate” white people.

“Children are dragged to the front of the classroom and are coerced to declare themselves as oppressors, that they should feel guilty because of their race, or that they are inherently a victim because of their race,” he said at the time.

Reeves is expected to sign a bill into law by a Thursday, April 24, 2025, deadline that will ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools and universities—curtailing efforts to ensure more hospitable learning environments for everyone regardless of characteristics like race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability.

The governor has praised President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies.

“Small homegrown businesses are the lifeblood of our economy. And small business owners all across America are relieved that we have a new administration that is more focused on economic growth than DEI and pronouns,” he wrote in a Facebook post in January.

Mississippi will observe Confederate Memorial Day on April 28, with state and local offices closing to commemorate the men who died fighting in rebellion against the United States in order to preserve the institution of human slavery.

The Mississippi Free Press has reached out to Reeves’ office for comment on this story.

For more on the Sons of Confederate Veterans, “redemption” schemes, and the censorship campaign to romanticize and sanitize the Confederacy in southern and U.S. textbooks, read this in-depth piece about first Mississippi State University President Stephen D. Lee’s successful efforts to rewrite the Confederate narrative.

Disclosure: Former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove has donated to the Mississippi Free Press. This does not affect our coverage.

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Mississippi

George County High School senior killed in Highway 26 crash, MHP says

Published

22 minutes ago

April 19, 2026

Press Room

George County High School senior killed in Highway 26 crash, MHP says

GEORGE COUNTY, Miss. (WLOX) — A George County High School senior is dead after an SUV hit him while bicycling on Highway 26 Friday night.

Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) officials said at 8:15 p.m. the MHP responded to a fatal crash on Highway 26 in George County.

Those officials said a Ford SUV traveling west on Highway 26 collided with 18-year-old Tyree Bradley of McLain, Mississippi, who was bicycling.

Bradley was fatally injured and died at the scene, MHP officials said.

The crash remains under investigation by the MHP.

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Mississippi

Mississippi State Drops Series Opener at Texas A&M Despite Late Chances

Published

13 hours ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

Mississippi State Drops Series Opener at Texas A&M Despite Late Chances

Some losses feel like they drag on longer than the box score suggests, and Mississippi State’s 3-1 opener at Texas A&M fits that category.

It wasn’t a blowout. It wasn’t a game where the Bulldogs looked outmatched.

It was just one of those nights where the early mistakes stuck around and the offense never quite found the swing that could shake them loose.

The frustrating part is how quickly the hole formed. Two solo homers and a wild pitch in the first two innings put Mississippi State behind 3-0, and that was basically the ballgame.

Against a top tier SEC team on the road, spotting three runs that early is a tough ask. The Bulldogs didn’t fold, but they also didn’t cash in when the door cracked open.

“I liked our fight. I think we’re really just working through some things offensively, and trying to stay together,” Mississippi State coach Samantha Ricketts said. “This team still believes, and we’re going to battle and fight every chance we get, and I think I saw a lot of that. I’m encouraged for what that means for us moving forward, but, you know, they’re a good hitting team, and we’ve got to be able to shut them down early. I don’t think Peja [Goold] had her best stuff, but she continued to battle out there and find ways to get outs.”

They had chances. Two runners stranded in the fifth. Two more in the sixth. Another in the seventh. Des Rivera finally got the Bulldogs on the board with an RBI single, but the big hit that usually shows up for this lineup never arrived.

It wasn’t a lack of traffic. It was a lack of finish.

If there was a bright spot, it came from the bullpen. Delainey Everett gave Mississippi State exactly what it needed after the rocky start.

“That was just a huge relief appearance by Delaney to keep us in it,” Ricketts said. “It’s really good to have her back and healthy these last few weeks because these are the moments where we really need her and rely on her. We know that she’s going to be a big part of the remainder of the season going forward as well.”

Three hitless innings, one baserunner, and a reminder that she’s quietly putting together a strong stretch.

There were individual positives too. Nadia Barbary keeps climbing the doubles list. Kiarra Sells keeps finding ways on base.

But the bigger picture is simple. Mississippi State is now 6-10 in the SEC, and the margin for error is shrinking. Nights like this one are the difference between climbing back into the race and staying stuck in the middle.

They get another shot this morning with the schedule bumped up for weather. The formula isn’t complicated.

Clean up the early innings, keep getting quality relief, and find one or two timely swings. The Bulldogs didn’t get them Friday. They’ll need them today.

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Mississippi farmers struggle through years without profit as war with Iran deepens crisis

Published

1 day ago

April 18, 2026

Press Room

YAZOO COUNTY, Miss. — Mississippi Delta farmers are facing another expensive planting season as fertilizer and fuel costs continue to climb.

Farmers in Yazoo and Sharkey counties, Clay Adcock and Jeffrey Mitchell, said it has been years since their crops turned a real profit.

“I guess it would be since 2022,” Adcock said.

“Last 2.5 to three years since we had a very profitable year,” Mitchell said.

Rising input costs squeeze farmers

Adcock said he was paying $300 per ton of fertilizer before the war with Iran broke out. He is now paying double for the same amount. Mitchell saw similar spikes.

“Fertilizer was up 25% before the Iranian conflict already,” Mitchell said. “Then since that started Diesel fuel is up 40% in the last six months.”

Survey and research from the American Farm Bureau show they are not the only ones feeling the pinch.

“We’ve got trouble with the farming community,” Adcock said. “And you can see that with the bankruptcies that are there and no young farmers that can afford the capital to get started.”

Mitchell said today’s farmers face a shrinking industry of suppliers. 75% of all fertilizer in the U.S. comes from four companies: Yara USA, CF Industries, Nutrien and Koch Industries.

“With the world market on fertilizer, pretty much everyone has the same price,” Mitchell said. “It’s not like you can go to store B, get a better price.”

forces

Oil and natural gas cut off in the Strait of Hormuz forces energy companies worldwide to compete for less supply. The spike in costs passes on to fertilizer producers, who pass higher prices on to distributors, leaving family farms at the end of the line with the most expensive bills.

“They deliver it to us and we’re at their mercy,” Adcock said.

Adcock said he would like to see more regulation to even the playing field among fertilizer companies and prevent potential price gouging.

“There should be guiderails in place to keep fertilizer producers within a range and if they get out of that range it throws up red flags as they do in the SEC with stocks,” Adcock said. “Have some consistency in our business.”

Mitchell said the costs will circle back to consumers at the store. The spike in diesel also increases the cost of transporting finished crops after harvest to stores.

“Everything will be higher once it gets to Kroger or Wal-Mart or wherever,” Mitchell said. “They’ll just pass it onto consumers.”

It is too early to tell what the final prices will look like once harvest season is over. Each farmer said one way consumers can help is to buy as much produce as possible directly from farmers at markets and buy American items.

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