Joe.My.God. LGBT News
The Mississippi Free Press reports:
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has declared April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, keeping alive a 32-year-old tradition that began in 1993. A member of the Rankin Greys, a Sons of Confederate Veterans camp based in Florence, Mississippi, announced the proclamation in a post in the organization’s Facebook group on April 18.
The SCV is a neo-Confederate organization that espouses “Lost Cause” ideology, which promotes a revisionist version of history that whitewashes the Confederacy’s racist past and downplays the role of slavery in the Civil War.
Each year, the Confederate Heritage Month proclamations appear on SCV Facebook pages, but neither the governor nor any other state official publicizes the proclamations or posts them on any public-facing state websites or social-media pages.
Read the full article.
NEW: Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves has declared April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month.
He did so at the behest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate organization that espouses “Lost Cause” ideology, which whitewashes the role of slavery in the Civil War. 🧵
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
Before he was governor, Tate Reeves spoke at the Sons of Confederate Veterans’ 2013 national gathering, in front of a massive Confederate flag behind him.
After he congratulated the organization for “keeping history for our youth,” a speaker compared “Yankees” to German “Nazis” in World War II.
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:33 PM
“Now, therefore, I, Tate Reeves, Governor of the State of Mississippi, hereby proclaim the month of April 2025 as Confederate Heritage Month in the State of Mississippi,” the governor’s April 17 proclamation says.
Here’s the full 2025 proclamation:
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:34 PM
After Kirk Fordice became Mississippi’s first Republican governor in a century after courting the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, he began the tradition of declaring April as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi in 1993.
www.mississippifreepress.org/mississippi-…— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:35 PM
Mississippi’s Confederate-themed 1894 state flag flew over state buildings until 2020, when state lawmakers voted to retire and replace it following decades of efforts by Black Mississippians.
www.mississippifreepress.org/you-white-pe…— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Even though Reeves had less than a year earlier signed the bill removing the emblem of the Confederacy from Mississippi’s state flag, he continued to deny the lasting effects of the state’s white supremacist history.
In 2021, he told Fox News that “there is not systemic racism in America.”
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:36 PM
Mississippi will also observe Confederate Memorial Day on April 28, with state and local offices closing to commemorate the men who died fighting in rebellion against the United States in order to preserve the institution of human slavery.
Unlike CHM, the holiday is mandated by state law.
— Ashton Pittman (@ashtonpittman.bsky.social) April 21, 2025 at 7:38 PM