Oftentimes you don’t notice things that aren’t there but should be. Or perhaps the image is one you prefer not to see, and therefore don’t. I wish to share with you an amazing podcast titled The Flag and the Fury. The Mississippi state flag was the last to include the Confederate battle flag. The story weaves personal fights by someone who surprised himself by becoming the first African-American cheerleader at Ole Miss, the granddaughter of rampant racist senator John Stennis, and the “final straw” role of the NCAA. It is simply an exceptional podcast of history and current events. I figured I’d illustrate the post with a picture of the old state flag. Certainly, I had pictures of county courthouses, and those would have flags flying, right?
In December, my post about Port Gibson, Mississippi started with an image of the Claiborne County courthouse, and its CSA soldier statue displayed in front. But no flags at all? I have pictures of the current and historic Warren County courthouses, but an empty flagpole by the “new” courthouse. Checked images from April 2019 of battlefields, historic sites, ruins, towns, parkways I shot in the state, and the U.S. flag is in several, but no state flag. But there!. The image of the Adams County Courthouse in Natchez had a flag flying!
Adams County Courthouse, Mississippi
Hmm, do I have one with a breeze and flags unfurled? Yep. U.S. flag, Adams County flag, and perhaps a POW flag in between. State flag? Nope.
A quick google search, and in April 2016, the Adams County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 to take down the Mississippi State flag at all county buildings.
So why no images of the old state flag? Did I just not notice the absence of it? Did I avoid taking pictures of the battle flag? Was it just not flying? Did I travel in parts of the state where it wasn’t being flown? I did learn on the trip that the state is not as universally “red” as I had thought, and especially in the western part of the state along the River. Natchez had a significant anti-slave movement or at least “tolerance” before the Civil War. Even the 2016 election results show more blue counties in Mississippi than in Illinois.
2016 Presidential election results, copyright 2016 Politico.com
The podcast notes the most popular selling flag in the state for the past several years has been one designed by Laurin Stennis. Shortly before the vote to remove the old flag, the Jackson Free Press urged that her design be adopted as the state flag. Despite her decades of anti-racist work, Laurin Stennis recognized that her grandfather’s supremacist legacy could not be untangled from what was being called the Stennis flag, and she stepped away from the effort to adopt her design as the new state flag.
Stennis Flag
For now, Mississippi remains the answer to the trivia question: What state does not have a flag? The complex narrative of racial history was further illustrated to me in a visit in Natchez to the William Johnson house. Johnson was born enslaved in 1809, the same year as Abraham Lincoln. His home is on the National Registry of Historic Places, of which less than 8% relate primarily to African Americans. Unfortunately, due to parking on the street, and the power lines, I was not able to get a good image, but here is the building now run by the National Park Service, and Johnson’s old home is on the right.
William Johnson home, Natchez, MS
Johnson’s master and father freed William Johnson’s mother from slavery in 1814. Johnson, Sr. had to travel to Louisiana to file the paperwork where laws were easier to free enslaved people; however, the law only applied to adults not minors! Eventually, Johnson, Sr. got the governor to sign an order freeing 11 year old William in 1820 after Mississippi became a state. Williams’ older sister married a free black man who was a barber and taught Johnson the profession, who in turn opened his own barbershop in 1830. Johnson would eventually run three barbershops, a bathhouse, and a farm. (Below is a phone snap from a mirror from one barbershop.) And he owned and used slaves in all those businesses, and he would inherit more slaves from his freed mother when she died.
In 1851 Johnson was shot by Baylor Winn, a mix-raced neighbor with whom he had a property dispute. In court, Winn argued he was not black but of American Indian and white descent, and the court agreed despite contrary evidence. Since Winn was declared to be non-black, no black person could testify against him under Mississippi law, and since all the witnesses were black, Winn was released.
However, what created a niche in history for William Johnson was not discovered until 75 years after his death in the attic of his house. From 1835 until his murder, he kept a diary. The diary, like his businesses, home and slaves, was a symbol of a cultured and educated life. It is the only account by a free black man of life in a small, southern, antebellum town. He never wrote of his thoughts of slavery and rarely even mentions owning other humans. Was it because owning slaves was just such a part of daily life that is was not worth mentioning, and not even “seen” by a former slave? Was it a too challenging part of his history to confront? We are just left with the questions.
