For the fourth year in a row, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has signed a proclamation declaring April as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, keeping alive a 30-year-old tradition that former Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice first began. Black people make up 38% of Mississippi’s population, which is the highest for any state.
A branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the SCV Camp 265 Rankin Rough & Ready’s, posted a copy of the proclamation on its Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon.
“Whereas, as we honor all who lost their lives in (the Civil War), it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us,” the proclamation says.
That’s a lot of words just to say “we’re a bunch of racist shitheels who want to wave our shitty loser flags in Black people’s faces.” But as historians are quick to point out, flags, statues, and other commemorations of the short-lived and morally bankrupt Confederate States of America were never about history and heritage. They were created to help reestablish white supremacy in the wake of the Civil War, Reconstruction and, much later, the Civil Rights Movement.
“Most of the people who were involved in erecting the monuments were not necessarily erecting a monument to the past,” said Jane Dailey, an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago.”But were rather, erecting them toward a white supremacist future.”
The most recent comprehensive study of Confederate statues and monuments across the country was published by the Southern Poverty Law Center last year. A look at this chart shows huge spikes in construction twice during the 20th century: in the early 1900s, and then again in the 1950s and 60s. Both were times of extreme civil rights tension.
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James Grossman, the executive director of the American Historical Association, says that the increase in statues and monuments was clearly meant to send a message.
“These statues were meant to create legitimate garb for white supremacy,” Grossman said. “Why would you put a statue of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson in 1948 in Baltimore?”
Why? Because you’re a racist asshole, that’s why. It never had to do with “culture and heritage”—in fact, that’s always been a dog whistle for white supremacy.
Of course, it’s not like Mississippi’s recent Democratic governors (er, governor) have diligently resisted going along with this awful tradition. As the Free Press points out, Reeves’ proclamation is similar in wording to the one Democratic Gov. Ronnie Musgrove issued in 2000. But Musgrove later said he regretted signing the proclamations, which Republican Gov. Kirk Fordice initiated in 1993 at the request of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Since then, the tradition has been upheld nearly every year—even as Confederate statues and flags came down across the country in the wake of protests over the police murder of George Floyd.
And while Reeves did sign a bill in June 2020 removing the Confederate battle symbol from the Mississippi state flag, he’s also denied that systemic racism exists in America and has since signed a law banning the teaching of critical race theory, bizarrely claiming that “children are dragged to the front of the classroom and are coerced to declare themselves as oppressors, that that they should feel guilty because of the color of their skin, or that they are inherently a victim because of their race.”
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Yeah, of all the things that don’t actually happen in our public schools, that’s pretty close to the top of the list. Of course, if white children feel bad or guilty because slavery once existed, imagine how Black kids must feel when they’re asked to celebrate a heritage that was all about keeping anyone who looked like them in bondage. Talk about humiliation.
At any rate, April remains a special month for Mississippi’s Confederate dead-enders. All 31 days of it. Because whatever else you want to say about racist dog-whistlers, this much is certain—they’re not terribly bright.
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