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Thomasa and Evangela on the Confederate Flag: ‘Stop letting it control you’

08.06.2018 by Donna Ladd // Leave a Comment

Thomas Massey says the Confederate represents her life as a poor southerner, and that of people of other races as well. She designed this T-shirt, which she wore in the interview. Courtesy Thomasa Massey

One of my most fascinating interviews on the Confederate flag of Mississippi was with two close friends, one white and black. I didn’t know that Thomasa Massey was going to bring Evangela Hentz to our appointment, which happened to be in the rain in Pearl Park in Rankin County. But she did.

Massey was wearing her “Pride, Not Prejudice” T-shirt with Confederate butterflies (!) that she had designed herself. The two women finished each other’s sentences, while telling us under a pavilion that being concerned about the Confederate and Mississippi flags is a waste of time better spent trying to solve other problems.

Hentz called the flag just an “inanimate object,” adding, “Stop letting it control you.”

“If you don’t breathe life into something, it will die,” Massey aaddedds.

The friends reject being offended over what Hentz calls “just a piece of cloth.”

“If everyone, I promise you, would take one hour out of every day worldwide, for 60 minutes and did not hate, the world would change,” Massey interjects.

Hentz cuts in. “Overnight, just about. Because you might discover the person you hated …”

“… is the person you need the most in your life …,” Massey said.

“… to complete you, to get you to that next step,” Hentz added. “I wouldn’t be as far as I am without her.”

“Same with me.”

“If I let that she’s a white person that likes the flag divide us, all that distance for what?” Hentz said.

“… a piece of cloth,” Massey finished as the rain hits the pavilion.

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Categories // Confederate Flag, Race, The South, Uncategorized

About Donna Ladd

Donna Ladd is a journalist and editor focused on policing, child policy and social justice issues. Ladd is a Kellogg Foundation leadership fellow, a freelance journalist in Mississippi and New York and editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press.

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Donna Ladd

I’m Donna Ladd, a writer, journalist and editor from Philadelphia, Mississippi. I write about racism/whiteness, poverty, gender, violence and the criminal-justice system. I regularly contribute long-form features and essays to The Guardian, and I’m the editor-in-chief of the Jackson Free Press, which I co-founded in 2002 after returning to my home state after 18 years in exile. I also write occasional columns for NBC News Think.

I am currently a Logan non-fiction fellow with an upcoming writing residency at the Carey Institute in upstate New York in March and April 2018 to work on a book about race in Mississippi.

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