Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday she believes Mississippi should adopt a new state flag without the Confederate battle emblem.
“Mississippi’s the only state in the country that still has the confederate battle emblem on the state flag — do you think Mississippi should adopt a new flag?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Warren at a town hall in Jackson, Mississippi.
Warren replied with one word – “Yes” – and was met with loud applause from the crowd.
There has been a big push to remove Confederate monuments, memorials and symbols after a white supremacist murdered nine African-Americans in a church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015.
The nationwide debate over the removal of the Confederate symbols was renewed in 2017 after white nationalists and neo-Nazis marched in Charlottesville, Virginia, to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The violent march resulted in the death of a counter-protestor.
A questioner at the town hall asked, “As a presidential hopeful, do you have any plans on addressing the removal, or lack there of, of the reminders of this nation’s dark past, or have any plans on preserving the nation’s history in a way that explains it in a more educational sense versus showing praise to the losing side?”
Warren said she would “support removing Confederate celebrations from federal land and putting them in museums, where they belong.”