MS Free Press: “Discarding the Mississippi state flag of 1894 came in a fast final chapter last summer after decades of political impasse. It was the only remaining state flag in the U.S. featuring the Confederate emblem.
The police killing of George Floyd on May 25 started the ultimate event chain. At the June 6 Black Lives Matter protest in Jackson, dumping the flag topped the organizers’ agenda of the biggest downtown demonstration since the civil-rights era. A few days later, a remarkable who’s who of religious, college sports and business leaders pushed its scuttling. By June 28, the Mississippi Legislature did just that, with the governor signing the measure two days later.
Less than a month after the protest, the flag came down on July 1.
More Than a Lyric in ‘Dixie’
Before the June 2020 tipping point, changing the flag had been debated for decades, signifying
more than a rectangle of fabric for those involved. In “Look Away, Look Away,” filmmaker Patrick O’Connor captures this chapter of history by turning his lens on Mississippians who made the flag fight their fight. In five years of filming, he came to see the debate as about more than the flag. The story is about identity itself: “It’s about who you think you are,” O’Connor says.
His 90-minute film premiers at the Oxford Film Fest on Saturday, March 27, but it will be made available online for Mississippi residents only from April 1 through 7.”