Legislation is making its way through Congress that would ban the Confederate battle emblem from flying over federal veterans cemeteries. But the statute will have little impact on the only state that uses the confederate image on its own flag.
Under the legislation, the Confederate Battle Emblem will not be allowed to fly over the US Veterans Administration owned cemeteries. Some of the burial sites around that nation allow the flags on both Memorial and Confederate Memorial Days. Small hand-held flags would still be allowed on individual graves.
Ross Aldridge is with the Dixie Alliance, a conservative group working to protect the status of the current Mississippi flag. He questions the motives of the measure.
“If it wasn’t a problem to bury those of the North and South together, one group on one side of the cemetery and one group on the other, why is it a problem to memorialize those who died.”
The legislation will not affect Mississippi’s three federal veteran’s cemeteries. None of them have Confederate soldiers interred nor do they fly a confederate or state flag at any time.
Second District Representative and Mississippi's lone Congressional Democrat, Bennie Thompson, was the state's only Representative to vote for the measure.
“There is no place for the Confederate Flag, in my opinion, other than in a museum,” says Thompson. “Every opportunity that I get to move that symbol of racism, hate and bigotry out of the eyes of the public and in a museum, I’ll do that.”
Neither state veterans cemeteries or national parks will be affected by the policy. The legislation is now heading to the US Senate.
