In 1954, the 1892 U.S. flag pledge was amended to read, “One nation under God,” forging the “melting pot” based on Aesop’s maxim, “United we stand, divided we fall.”

Now, writing this missive while natural devastation occurs in Texas and again, to some degree, in Petal, in this context, the writer, a Vietnam War veteran, reflects on picking cotton from Smith County to Wayne in the 1950s in August to earn money before school started in September. This experience elucidated the so-called “heritage and history” of the 64.39 percent of Mississippi voting population proclaiming the state flag as such. It is Alexander Stephens’ notion of the Confederacy, as Otto Kerner reported in 1967, “Two societies, one Black and one White ‘separate but unequal,’” symbolized in the Mississippi state flag.

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