Pro-Confederate groups to march in support of Mississippi monuments

Two pro-Confederate groups are reportedly preparing to march on Saturday in support of monuments on the University of Mississippi campus and in opposition to the school’s decision to remove its former mascot, Colonel Reb.

Confederate 901 and the Hiwaymen are organizing the Mississippi Stands Rally at a Confederate monument located on the college’s campus, the Clarion Ledger reported Tuesday.

There are 95 people who said on a Facebook page they are going and more than 350 people are interested. 

The groups said they are protesting Ole Miss because the university “disregarded and disrespected the traditions of a once great southern university.” 

“Far to [sic] long the administration has kowtowed to the minority left leaning students and basically have done everything that they have demanded,” they wrote on the event page.

The groups are calling for supporters who are “fed up with this Political Correctness BS” to join them.

They also focused on the removal of the Colonel Reb mascot, a white-goateed Southern plantation owner. Colonel Reb was removed in 2010 and placed with Rebel Black Bar.

The Hill has reached out to the university for comment. 

The university launched an effort in 2014 to rename, move or re-contextualize Confederate monuments and statues on the Oxford campus, the Jackson, Miss. newspaper noted. 

As part of that effort, school officials ordered a new plaque that explains why the statue where protesters will gather was built. It now includes the words: “It must also remind us that the defeat of the Confederacy actually meant freedom for millions of people.”

Ole Miss officials also removed the Mississippi state flag with its Confederate battle emblem from campus after a gunman killed nine African-Americans in a Charleston, S.C. church, the Clarion Ledger reported.

The effort to remove Confederate monuments saw renewed attention after that church shooting and the deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017.