What began as scattered calls for removing the Confederate battle flag intensified in Southern states, with public university leaders in South Carolina, Texas and Mississippi advocating against the use of Confederate symbols. In South Carolina, less than a week after nine parishioners were shot to death in a black church, the board that governs the Citadel, the state’s 173- year old military academy, voted, 9 to 3, to put in motion the removal of the Confederate Naval Jack from the campus chapel. Board members stated that a Citadel graduate and the relatives of six employees were killed in the attack on the church. To remove the flag, however, requires the authorization of the South Carolina legislature, as the flag’s placement was part of the state’s Heritage Act, the 2000 legislation that also put the Confederate battle flag on the state Capitol grounds.
“The Board of Vistors and I believe now is the right time to move the flag from a place of worship to an appropriate location,” the president of the Citadel, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. John W Rosa, said in a statement. “We pride ourselves on our core values of honor, duty, and respect. Moving the Naval Jack to another location is consistent with these values and is a model to all of the principled leadership we seek to instill in our cadets and students.”
The University of Mississippi also released a statement outlining its stance on the Confederate flag controversy. Morris H. Stocks, interim chancellor of Ole Miss, wrote: “The University of Mississippi community came to the realization years ago that the Confederate battle flag did not represent many of our core values such as civility and respect for others. Since that time, we have become a stronger and better university. We join other leaders in our state who are calling for a change in the state flag.”
The debate over removing the Confederate symbols from public grounds heated up on major college campuses in Texas as well. Following the vandalization of Confederate statues on the University of Texas at Austin campus, pressure is building in the state to remove the statues of the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis, General Robert E. Lee, and a Texas Confederate commander, Albert Johnson. The phrase, “Black Lives Matter,” was painted on each statue and the Jefferson Davis statue also had “Bump All The Chumps” tagged on one side.
UT Austin President Gregory Fenves met student leaders about the statues on Monday to “discuss the future of the Jefferson statue” and to address the requests to remove the other statues, the university said. U.S. Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, said the day has come for Confederate monuments to be removed from public places. “People feel that it is time to put it in the past. We understand it is part of this country’s history but the proper place for that is in a museum, and not on a public university campus,” he told Reuters.