Jackson Free Press

Mississippi native Duvalier Malone has started a petition to remove the Confederate symbol from the Mississippi state flag. The online petition form has over 1,100 signatures. In a statement, Malone said he "wants to create enough momentum for Mississippi to have another referendum vote on the flag, which will hopefully result in positive change."

The petition is written in letter format, and Malone cites recent racially motivated violence in Jackson as well as the Charleston massacre, saying that positive change can come from such atrocities.

He writes, "Now is the time to join forces and face this issue, which has cast a shadow on our state for too long. Even Republican Mississippi House Speaker Philip Gunn agrees: Now is the time to leave the Confederate battle flag behind us -- before another innocent person is attacked in its name."

As previously reported by the Jackson Free Press, unless Gov. Bryant calls a special session, the flag debate will have to wait until January for the Legislature. If the petition turns into a ballot initiative, it would need a minimum of 107,216 signatures, with specific number requirements from each of the five congressional districts.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/07/22026/

He may not be leading money totals or straw polls, but Senator Bernie Sanders apparently did something that no other candidate has done yet in the 2016 presidential race... he had a record crowd last night in Wisconsin, pushing 10,000 people. Interesting.

During the last couple weeks of talking about the Confederacy (and the state flag that celebrates it), we've encountered any number of historic inaccuracies in the arguments of those who don't want to change our state flag.

One of them is that (a) not many white Mississippians even owned slaves and (b) that only 6 to 10 percent of Confederate soldiers owned slaves.

Here are the problems with that argument as the chart and link before bring into full relief. As you can see in this excellent MPB documentary, many Confederates soldiers were just 17 or 18 years old. But many of the soldiers' families owned at least one or two slaves.

Based on 1860 Census results, 49 percent of Mississippi households owned slaves at the start of the Civil War, and more than half the population of our state—55 percent—were slaves. Slavery was massive here and directed affected nearly half the white families in Mississippi, including some who weren't as wealthy as the planters who owned many slaves (and who were at first exempt from fighting in the Civil War when the Confederacy instituted a draft, but that's another subject).

The chart below shows the number of slaves in all of the states that existed at the start of the Civil War.

Also, read my column this week, "Driving Old Dixie Down," for many links to historic sources about Mississippi and other Confederate states at the start of the war, including extensive evidence of why the Confederacy formed: in order to have a strong central federal government to force slaves on any new states, and to ensure that it got its runaway slaves back.

http://www.civil-war.net/pages/1860_census.html

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/02/21958/

Update: Now there are only three counties in the state not issuing same-sex marriage licenses according to Unity MS. The Campaign for Southern Equality and ACLU of Mississippi have compiled a map of the counties that are (and aren't) issuing marriage licenses for same-sex couples. For updates see the list here. Counties not issuing licenses are either waiting for the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay on the Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant case or are waiting on new marriage licensing forms.

The counties currently not issuing licenses are:

Holmes and Issaquena counties are waiting for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to lift the stay on the Campaign for Southern Equality v. Bryant case.

Smith County is waiting for an updated system and forms.

http://jacksonfreepress.com/users/photos/2015/jul/01/21932/