Mississippi's Confederate Heritage Month proclamation prompts outcry

overnor Phil Bryant faces backlash after announcement, which fails to
mention slavery as it establishes 25 April as ‘Confederate Memorial Day’

Matthew Teague
Sunday 3 April 2016 16.08 BST

The Confederacy is rising again, this time using perhaps the final weapon in its arsenal: calendars.

Mississippi governor Phil Bryant recently proclaimed April to be Confederate Heritage Month, adding an official flourish to a longstanding tradition in his state and several others. April, he wrote in the proclamation, is “the month in which the Confederate States began and ended a four-year struggle”.

Bryant’s proclamation does not mention the central cause of the struggle – slavery – but instead announces the month as a chance to “gain insight from our mistakes and successes” and to “earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us”. It also sets aside 25 April as “Confederate Memorial Day”.

The proclamation set off an outcry around the state. Bryant may have expected less-than-universal acceptance of his declaration: he did not issue it on the official Mississippi state website, alongside other proclamations. Instead it appeared without notice on the site of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

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