Just to clarify: although I will talk about some things that I find bad in this new flag, I do not in any way prefer the original 1861 Magnolia Flag or the 1894-2020 flag to this one. So, in November, the Mississippian voters picked a new flag. Their old flag, which I won’t show here, featured the Confederate Battle Flag, and to many in the state, represented oppression and systemic racism. Before the election, there were really five flags that were finalists, and the best ones of those were combined into this flag, which is now the official flag of Mississippi.
As I said in the title of the post, there are good and bad parts of this flag. Let’s start with the good parts.
Firstly, the flag is an improvement because it features no Confederate symbolism. After all, that was the purpose of the flag. This is really the most obvious thing about it, good or bad.
Secondly, the symbolism is much better and richer. The Magnolia represents Mississippi as the Magnolia State, and the blue represents the Mississippi River. The gold represents Mississippi’s rich culture, and the red represents “Hardiness.” The twenty stars represent Mississippi as the twentieth state, and the gold star which stands alone represents the Native Americans who first inhabited Mississippi. “In God We Trust” is the state motto.
Finally, this flag just looks better than the old one. I think that the original was a little too bright, and not original enough. The symbolism was just the Confederacy and the United States.
Now for the bad. Granted, there are not nearly as many bad things as in the original flag, but there are some symbolism and design elements that I don’t really like.
Mainly, the “In God We Trust” motto. I really don’t like how much Christian symbolism the US government endorses and creates, and I also just don’t like text on a flag. I see no reason to put the motto onto the flag other than to endorse Christianity (which the government shouldn’t do).
I also think that the magnolia is a bit too complicated. I don’t hate it, but I would prefer a less complicated stylized magnolia.
So, based off all of this, here is my ideal redesign of the Flag of Mississippi:
I made very slight changes to the proportions and the red and gold bars, but more drastic changes to the magnolia and the stars. For the magnolia, I just did a simple stylized flower based off of the magnolia flower. For the stars, I moved them to the gold bars, and I changed every star to the type made up of the five diamonds.
