Flag Commission to begin narrowing down designs for new Mississippi state flag

JACKSON, Miss. (WLBT) - The Committee to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag hosted its second meeting Tuesday morning.

The committee received an outline of how it will move forward with selecting flag designs.

The process will include three rounds of elimination before a final selection is forwarded to the legislature.

Mississippi Department of Archives and History Director Katie Blount said more than 1,000 designs have been submitted so far, and the commission will review each of them before narrowing down the selections.

“The commissioners will vote on all of the ones that have been submitted that meet the legislature’s criteria, and that will be round 1,” Blount said. “They’ll each choose 25, we’ll then go to round 2 and those will be visible to the public too as soon as we have that round set.”

On Monday, Aug. 3, MDAH will upload a link to its website for the public to view the designs that have been submitted.

From that point, Blount said each commission member will share their top 10 rankings to advance to round 3.

Following the 3rd round of cuts, they will select 5 designs to move forward, including any flags the commissioners have edited.

Blount said the commission will decide whether to have the top 5 flags manufactured to give them a better idea of how it will look.

“We’ll also put those 5 flags on our website and this time we’ll have a period of public comment where you can look at the flags, you can comment on them, you can poll,” Blount said. “The public can indicate their favorites. We’ll vet it with our staff at archives and history but once we post the comments, everybody will be able to see them including the commissioners.”

At the final meeting slated for September, the commission will select one flag and the chairman of the group will send a letter to the legislature and Governor Reeves before it is added to the ballot.

Vexillologist Clay Moss made a presentation before the commission detailing the best practices when designing a flag.

He said the best designs are simple, distinctive, and recognizable from a distance.

“You want to try to create an item any child could draw from memory without having to go look,” Moss said. “It should be fairly easy to sew, if you have a few sewing skills you could get your own sewing machine and make the flag.”

The deadline to submit flag designs on Saturday, Aug. 1.

Designs can be emailed to emcraney@mdah.ms.gov.

They can also be mailed to the following address:

Commission to Redesign the Mississippi State Flag
Mississippi Department of Archives and History
P.O. Box 571
Jackson, MS, 39205-0571

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