Radiolab - The Flag and the Fury

How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying. A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days before that, it coming down would have seemed impossible. Shima Oliaee dives into the story behind this de-flagging: a journey involving a clash of histories, designs, families, and even cheerleading. This episode was reported and produced by Shima Oliaee. To read or listen to Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Heavy/Kiese-Laymon/9781501125669.

Duration: 1h 15m
Broadcast on: 12 Jul 2020
Audio Format: other

How do you actually make change in the world? For 126 years, Mississippi has had the Confederate battle flag on their state flag, and they were the last state in the nation where that emblem remained “officially” flying. A few days ago, that flag came down. A few days before that, it coming down would have seemed impossible. Shima Oliaee dives into the story behind this de-flagging: a journey involving a clash of histories, designs, families, and even cheerleading.

This episode was reported and produced by Shima Oliaee.

To read or listen to Kiese Laymon's memoir Heavy: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Heavy/Kiese-Laymon/9781501125669.

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Before we start, this podcast contains a fair amount of strong language. I pledge to never be passive, patriotic, or grateful in the face of American abuse. I pledge to always thoughtfully bite the self-righteous American hand and thinks it's feeding us. I pledge to white Mississippians and white Americans whenever dictate who I choose to be or what symbols I choose to imbue with meaning. I pledge to not allow American ideals of patriotism and masculinity to make me hard, abusive, generic, and brittle. I pledge to messily love our people and myself better than I did yesterday. I pledge to be the kind of free that makes justly winning and gently losing possible. To never ever confuse cowardice with courage. I pledge allegiance to the Mississippi freedom fighters who made all my pledges possible. I pledge allegiance to the baby Mississippi liberation fighters coming next. This is my pledge of allegiance to my United States of America and to my Mississippi. Ready or not, this is a pledge to my home. Are y'all standing up? Resolution Bachelor. History will be made here today. Okay. Mississippi. Savage uncivilized state. The state of extremes. Murder and racial hatred. In Jackson, Mississippi. The state where Emmett Till was brutally murdered. Metcurevers was assassinated. And shot in the back by a single round from a high-powered rifle. The state with the highest number of lynchings in the Union, but also a staggeringly high number of Nobel Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winners. The most charitable state in the Union. Mississippi is also the state with the highest percentage of black people in America. And for the last 126 years, Mississippi has had a Confederate battle flag on their state flag, sort of upper left-hand corner. Red, white and blue stripes, Confederate battle flag, upper left. Other states like South Carolina and Georgia would fly the Confederate flag on their state capitals, but one by one, they took them off, Mississippi was the last holdout. Until last week. You might have heard about this on the news. I want to tell you the story behind this deflagging. It's an amazing story. Something we've been following for months because it's way more than just another story about taking down a thing. Just because we've had it for years doesn't mean we need to keep. This is a journey that involves a clash of histories, designs, generations and philosophies about how to make change. This is a story that I've been working on with my Dali Parn's America colleague, Shima Oliai, and she'll start us off. It was just as far as I could see. It's kind of better flags. And the stands, instead of pom-poms, you can see the flag waving like it was a pom-pom.

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