Politicians in Mississippi are set to vote on a bill to remove the Confederate battle emblem from its state flag.
The Republican-led state congress passed a vote on Saturday to allow a vote on changing the state flag, passing the House of Representatives 84-35 and the Senate 36-14.
The state is the last in the US to feature the emblem in its flag, adopting the design in 1894 – almost thirty years after the Confederate surrender.
A bill proposing the move is due to be proposed on Sunday and will require only a simple majority to pass.
Should the bill pass, Republican Governor Tate Reeves has said he would sign the bill into law, adding “the argument over the flag has become as divisive as the flag itself and it’s time to end it.”
Should it become law, a commission will be tasked with designing a new flag for the state, which would then be voted on in November.
The move comes in the wake of widespread Black Lives Matter protests which have taken place across the state and the US in response to the death of George Floyd in police custody.
The Confederate emblem has long been a source of controversy in the state, with a 2001 referendum on adopting a new flag being defeated, with 64 percent rejecting the proposed design.
However, calls for change grew again after the shooting of a church in Charleston, South Carolina in 2015 by Neo-Confederate and white supremacist Dylann Roof.
Georgia was the only other US state to ever feature the Confederate emblem on its state flag, following a redesign to incorporate it in 1956. It was removed in 2003.
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