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Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press

In this April 25, 2020 photograph, a small Mississippi state flag is held by a participant during a drive-by “re-open Mississippi” protest past the Governor’s Mansion, in the background, in Jackson, Miss. This current flag has in the canton portion of the banner the design of the Civil War-era Confederate battle flag, that has been the center of a long-simmering debate about its removal or replacement.

Support to replace the state flag, which includes the Confederate battle emblem as part of its design, appears to be gaining momentum, based on the latest polling from Mississippi-based Chism Strategies.

Forty-six percent support retaining the old flag compared to 44.9 percent who support changing it. In terms of polling, the outcome would essentially be considered a statistical tie. In September 2017, when Chism polled on the same question, the result was 49 percent to 41 percent in favor of the old flag.

“National polls confirm that our nation is wrestling with the issues of race and criminal justice reform like no other time in the last 40 years,” said Brad Chism of Chism Strategies. “This poll shows that many Mississippians are engaged in that debate. But polls are a snapshot in time. As of last Wednesday, there was not enough support to change the state flag. But there was more support than ever before. And there is momentum on the side of change.”

Chism Strategies, which often does work for Democratic politicians, polled on the issue in light of the renewed efforts this legislative session to change the flag.

Those efforts were revived amid nationwide protests, including in Mississippi, over police brutality directed primarily at African Americans. The recent death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers has galvanized communities across the country.

In 2001, the Legislature placed on the ballot a binding resolution asking voters would they rather keep the old flag or replace it with a new design. The old flag garnered 64 percent of the vote.

Many supporters of changing the flag are reluctant to hold another statewide vote on the issue. But Gov. Tate Reeves and many legislators maintain that the flag should not be changed unless by a vote of the people.

Chism said support for changing the flag obviously is gaining momentum, but he said despite the polling at this point he thinks it still would be a long shot to change the flag via an election.

The poll found among respondents age 65 and over support the old flag by an overwhelming 62 percent to 25 percent margin. In all other age categories, changing the flag led by a 52 percent to 41 percent margin.

Self-identified Republicans support the old flag by 81 percent to 11 percent, while Democrats favor replacing the banner by a 74 percent to 17 percent margin. Independents favor a new flag 54 percent to 32 percent.

Among black Mississippians, 84 percent favor changing the flag.

“Passions are high on both sides of this issue and we see a large age break,” Chism said. “Champions of the current flag are mostly white senior citizens and hardcore Republican voters who turn out in greater numbers in most elections than younger voters, Democrats and independents, who largely favor a new flag.”

Chism continued: “Earlier polls confirmed that African Americans cared about many issues in addition to a new flag—better health care, criminal justice reform, better roads… A huge question now is whether the energy in the movement in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy will focus on the state flag or some other issue.”

On both sides of the question four of five respondents said the issue is “very important.” Those who support changing the flag cite such items as the flag being racist and national reputation of the state as reasons for their position. Those who support the current flag say they do so because the banner represents the state’s heritage.

The poll, conducted during one day last week, of 540 Mississippians on cellphones and landlines has a margin of error of 4.4 percent. African Americans represent 33 percent of the respondents.

The post Poll: Mississippians marginally favor keeping current state flag, but support for change gains steam appeared first on Mississippi Today.

MS.gov

Prior to 2001, both Georgia and Mississippi faced constant battles over the state flag. Georgia’s governor pushed legislators to change the flag while Mississippi put it to a vote. The debate still rages in Mississippi while Georgians have moved on.

About the time in 2001 the Mississippi Legislature was scheduling a referendum to let voters decide on whether to replace the state flag, the Georgia General Assembly was passing a bill to change its flag.

The two banners both prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem in their designs. The Mississippi flag still does. The Georgia flag does not.

Bobby Harrison

Before the pivotal year of 2001, both states faced constant political fights over their flags. Those fights continue in Mississippi.

They have been renewed in recent days in the Mississippi Legislature after nationwide protests over the issue of police brutality against African Americans – intensified by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis at the hands of law enforcement recorded in graphic detail via cellphone videos.

It might be of interest to recall what happened in 2001 in the two Southern states.

In Georgia, Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes, a former lawmaker, used his legislative experience to guide to passage with stunning speed a bill to change the state flag.

At the time, what Barnes accomplished was hailed by civil rights leaders and others.

But a year later, Barnes lost his re-election effort to Republican Sonny Perdue, who campaigned on a promise to allow Georgians to vote on whether they wanted to restore the state flag that had been removed at Barnes’ behest.

As governor, Perdue was successful in pushing through legislation to create a flag referendum. But Perdue was not successful in getting the Legislature to agree to place on the election ballot the flag containing the Confederate battle emblem.

The flag adopted by Georgia voters was essentially patterned after the first official flag of the Confederacy, but not the battle cross that was most closely associated with the South in the Civil War. The flag that was approved is predominately red and white with 13 stars in a circle in the upper left corner of the banner said to represent the 13 original colonies including Georgia. In that circle is the Georgia state seal and the familiar words “In God we trust.”

Barnes’ effort was viewed as a success since the symbol representing hate and racism in the eyes of many was removed. But the replacement of that flag is viewed as one of the factors costing Barnes his re-election bid since changing it angered many Georgians.

In Mississippi, then-Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove created a flag commission. The commission, after contentious meetings throughout the state, recommended a vote to allow Mississippians to decide between the old flag, including its Confederate cross, and a new design.

Some argued that the commission should have recommended that the Legislature change the flag. It may be important to remember that the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 2000 that the state did not have an official flag because the Legislature omitted the flag statute when it was renewing laws in the early 1900s. Apparently for decades no one noticed this oversight.

But in 2001, that was supposed to be fixed. The Legislature voted to hold the flag referendum where the old flag won by a landslide with 64 percent of the vote.

A member of the House, lamenting the recent controversy over the Mississippi flag, complained that if the issue had not been placed on the ballot in 2001 it would be easier to change it now. That referendum, he said, created a precedent that makes it difficult for legislators to bypass the voters on the combustible issue.

But the truth is that in 2001 there was no easy way, perhaps no way at all, to change the flag. The better path for those who wanted to eventually have a new flag might have been to do nothing in 2001 – just wait to see if a better opportunity came along.

Today nearly all Democrats – both black and white – support changing the flag. That was not the case in 2001 when Democrats held majorities in both chambers

Maybe, there were the votes in 2001 to get the bill through the House, though, Speaker Tim Ford did not want to force his members to vote on the controversial issue. He badly wanted a referendum.

Getting a proposal through the Senate would have been even more difficult. Lt. Gov. Amy Tuck, the presiding officer, was the only one of the seven statewide elected Democrats not to endorse the new flag. By the way, she ran for and won her second term as lieutenant governor as a Republican.

Perhaps, the biggest irony is that Musgrove’s opponent in his re-election bid, Republican Haley Barbour, hammered him over the issue of the flag just like Perdue did Barnes.

The only difference is that Musgrove was hammered for trying to change the banner. Barnes was lambasted for changing it.

But they both lost.

The post A tale of two Southern states and their Confederate battle cross flags appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The Legislature tries to craft a state budget as we head into the unknown.

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Artists Dear Silas, Sam Mooney and more find their voice in recording studios across the state

Blues fanatics like Dick Waterman once traveled to Mississippi to track down influential blues musicians whose music had lapsed into obscurity. 

Delta bluesman Son House, Skip James of Bentonia and hill country great Fred McDowell all enjoyed renaissance periods through the 1960s and ’70s, recording music and playing across the U.S. and Europe. Some artists, though, like Leo “Bud” Welch of Calhoun County, were never discovered in the first place. 

“You haven’t seen an unknown blues artist come out of the hill country in a while,” says Matt Patton, co-owner of Dial Back Sound in Water Valley. “That was just out of left field that he came, and he was such a bright, shining presence there towards the end of his life.”

Welch was one album into his brief recording career when the 82-year-old came to Dial Back to cut I Don’t Prefer No Blues [Big Legal Mess, 2015], a bracingly raw record of hill country blues. Patton remembers backing Welch on “Girl in the Holler” with studio co-owner Bronson Tew, plus Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bryant, when he suddenly sprang to life.

“When it hit him—the groove and the vibe that we were all giving him—he jumped up out of his chair,” recalls Patton, who also plays bass in Drive-By Truckers. “He started to dance around the room, and whoop and holler into the microphone. It was completely raw and organic.”

Recording studios like Dial Back Sound play an important role in documenting the sounds and artists of Mississippi. Jackson’s country-rockers Young Valley, singer-songwriter Spencer Thomas and indie rock trio Water Liars have all recorded there. Some artists have traveled from Seattle, Los Angeles and even the Czech Republic to catch what inspired people like Welch.

“It’s not so much the science and the theory as it is just the vibe,” Patton says, “and putting out what sounds good to us.”

Shell Enos of Crown Studios in Jackson can relate. Part of the reason he established his studio in the Fondren neighborhood five years ago was to push back against the stifling environments he found at other studios.

“I like the low-pressure, ‘take your shoes off’” vibe, he says. “If [a song]’s not working, go make a cup of coffee and come back in 30 minutes and try it again. Just really laid back.”

His methods have worked well so far. Enos, a hip-hop head whose first major sound gigs were mixing Mystikal live in Vicksburg and Rick Ross at the Mississippi Coliseum, made fast friends with Jackson artist Dear Silas. His hit song “Skrr Skrr,” recorded at Crown, has 4.2 million streams on Spotify to date.

“When I met with him the first time,” Enos says, “we sat out on that patio and talked about what the vision would be for The Last Cherry Blossom,” Silas’s breakthrough album that spawned “Skrr Skrr” and earned him a deal with RCA Records. 

“Early on, I honestly didn’t know a ton about his music, but I could see he had that fire in his eye, and there was like a certain level of musicality that he wanted to bring to the whole project.”

When Enos and his wife moved to Jackson six years ago from Michigan, he found a vibrant music scene and a low cost of living that make it ideal for supporting a strong music scene. Now he has a stable of versatile backing musicians who come in to record sessions with artists of all kinds. 

“In the same week, we may do a gospel record, rock record, a pop record, a hip-hop record and a singer-songwriter,” he says. “We are all over the place. But I love every session.”

Enos and his wife fully embraced the Fondren community, and the feeling’s been mutual—the studio’s mission is to document the art being made there. They live a couple of blocks away from Crown, and they’re neighbors with a lot of their clients.

“So many times we’ll go out or just be on a walk and bump into the people that come in and do session work at Crown. I would say the vast majority of the artists I work with live in Fondren.”

Before Casey Combest founded Blue Sky Studios in Jackson a decade ago, the musician and producer had started to notice a gap of opportunity widening between artists at different levels of the industry.

“I began to see this middle class of musicians emerge,” he says, “which means in a minor market like Mississippi, you could actually do music full-time and still be unheard of in L.A. or New York.”

Combest took five years to prove his concept, keeping the studio a part-time concern until he knew it would work. Since then, he’s had a hand in records by artists such as Sam Mooney, a Brookhaven native whose song “Find My Way” reached No. 1 on the iTunes Singer/Songwriter chart.

“We want to help artists and bands launch and grow meaningful music careers,” says Combest. “We really work hard to help people find that spot where their music is both unique and authentic to them, but crafted in a way that sounds current and relevant to what’s happening in the global market.”

Combest also found a niche producing podcasts for clients in Mississippi (including Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast) and elsewhere, and now operates Blue Sky Podcasting separately from the music studio.  

“We now have about 15 companies that we help in some form or fashion with their podcasts,” he says. “Half of those are based here in Mississippi and the other half are national or global companies.”

Diving into podcasting as a business brought Combest back to what originally inspired him to start his own business.

“When I first started 10 years ago, it really was triggered by a podcast,” he says. “There was a guy I listened to a lot, and he talked about entrepreneurship. I looked backwards and saw that entrepreneurship had always been something I cared about in some form or fashion. [But] when you’re a kid selling baseball cards or doing something like that, you don’t call it entrepreneurship.

“Podcasts, in a lot of ways, was my MBA. It was how I learned about business and leadership, and growing a business. It always kind of had a special place in my heart.”

Because recording studios in Mississippi exist outside of high-pressure, high-overhead music markets like those in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, musicians and producers here are free to explore their craft and creativity without scrutiny. Artists can afford to spend the time it takes to find their voice, and to find collaborative partners to perfect their music.

“In five years, if I’m not doing either of these things, I’d be sad,” Combest says. “But at the end of the day, I want to make sure that I’m helping whoever I’m working with, if that’s a company, a brand or a musician. I think for me, it’s just more about making it better.”

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