Sports

Mississippi Flag: Prominent College Football Figures Join Movement to Remove Confederate Emblem

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Some of the most recognizable figures in Mississippi's college football community are signing onto a movement to have the Confederate emblem removed from the state's flag.

Ole Miss and Mississippi State head football coaches Hugh Freeze and Dan Mullen signed a full page ad published in Monday's print edition The Jackson Clarion-Ledger calling for the alteration. The ad consists of a letter, co-signed by many notable people who hail from Mississippi, The Ledger reported.

Joining Freeze and Mullen is Archie Manning, who was born in Drew, Miss. and attended Ole Miss, playing quarterback for the Rebels. Ross Bjork and Scott Stricklin, the athletic directors at Ole Miss and Mississippi State, respectively, also signed the letter.

But the signees stretched far beyond college football, including musician Jimmy Buffet, authors John Grisham and Kathryn Stockett, actor Morgan Freeman, former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Reuben Anderson, as well as many more.

"It is simply not fair, or honorable, to ask black Mississippians to attend schools, compete in athletic events, work in the public sector, serve in the National Guard, and go about their normal lives with a state flag that glorifies a war fought to keep their ancestors enslaved," the letter reads, according to ESPN. "It's time for Mississippi to fly a flag for all its people."

South Carolina removed the Confederate Flag from the state's Capitol Building in the wake of the murder of nine people at a historically black church in Charleston allegedly carried out by a white supremacist. But unlike South Carolina, a state that flew the Confederate Flag alongside the state flag, Mississippi's flag has the Confederate emblem embedded in it.

Since the Charleston shooting, many states and public institutions have fielded renewed efforts to have symbols of the Confederacy removed. For example, the University of Texas is planning to move a statue of Jefferson Davis, the Confederacy's first President, from the outdoor Main Mall to an indoor setting.

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