The current state flag of Mississippi, adopted in 1894, will probably lose its official status and be replaced through legislation in a matter of days, although there doesn't seem to be a consensus on what a new flag might look like. At any rate, it won't contain the infamous stars and bars that accompanied Confederate troops in the War Between the States.
Ultimately, what's all this flag mumbo-jumbo about anyway? Flags have been around for a long, long time. Originally, they were used to visually identify military units and ships, both to their own forces and, in some cases to the enemy. Later, as nation states evolved, flags were used to represent entire countries. This was militarily necessary until various forms of electrical and electronic communication were developed. Today, the only real use of flags in a military context are patches sewn on individual soldier's uniforms to identify them under the terms of international law. In any other context flags are anachronistic remnants of another age that are held dear and represent both jingoistic loyalty and a signal to others. Nobody needs a flag for anything.
Flags do provide something of a clue to what was going on in some people's minds at a certain time. For instance, let's examine the Minnesota state flag.
The complex, generally inartistic and crappy flag was originally created in 1893. The state was flagless for 35 anonymous years until one was required for the Chicago World's Fair. Modified since, its most important features are in the very center of the banner. A mounted native American is bounding away, presumably into the sunset, and leaving his home to provide opportunity to an immigrant farmer plowing up the virgin top soil to plant turnips or spuds. Behind him are his musket, powder horn, and axe. Maybe the firearm is there in case a deer wanders by and provides the opportunity for a few meals but it's more likely that the weapon is meant to discourage or dispatch one of the former land holders quitting the country.
Flag-bearing Minnesotans, if they are even aware of the details of their banner, must, by displaying it, celebrate the conquest of the upper Mississippi Valley, the expulsion or death of most of the native population, and its absorption into an organization that allows no members to resign.
1 comment:
The designs of USA atate flags are almost all terrible, and the 1893 exposition is an explanation of why all states seem to have adopted similar half-assed designs in the late nineteenth century. Minnesota is a pretty common design, the state seal on some sort of background, usually blue. And the Minnesota design is bad, but not actually the worst, there are some states that had to put the name of the state on the flag itself to distinguish it from all the other similar designs.
Its fair to note that the southwestern states (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Texas) have decent designs, with New Mexico and Arizona actually having good flags, the South Carolina and Rhode Island flags are decent and Maryland is at least distinctive. The rest are awful. In fact all national and state symbolism, apart from the national flag, needs revision.
Mississippi will be the last state to incorporate a Confederate emblem, though the Confederacy went through three flag designs in less than five years, and the one everyone associates with the Confederacy initially was the battle flag of one of their armies. Mississippi could do worse than to simply use the Magnolia flag adopted when the state joined the Confederacy, the association is not obvious by looking at the flag so I think it would fly in the current environment.
Checking the relevant Wikipedia article, it turns out the Minnesota flag has been criticized as well, for uninspired design, and in 1989 a perfectly good tricolor, with a wavy middle horizontal stripe and the star of the north, was proposed to replace it, but there seems to have been no movement on making the change.
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