Officer Loses, Then Regains, Job in a Dispute Over Mississippi’s Flag

It has been an eventful week for Wardell Jackson, an officer for the Capitol Police in Jackson, Mississippi. On Monday, he was fired from his job. On Wednesday, he was told he could return — after he waits out a weeklong suspension without pay.

He found himself in this predicament after a confrontation he had on Saturday with several people who were waving the official Mississippi state flag — the only one in the United States that includes a likeness of the Confederate battle flag.

Jackson, 57, was on duty outside the new civil rights museum in downtown Jackson when he encountered a group of people lining up to participate in the annual Dixie National Livestock Show and Rodeo parade. They were marching in support of the state flag, but some participants displayed Confederate battle flags.

A few marchers tried to take photographs with their flags in front of the sign behind the museum, but Jackson urged them to move away. An argument broke out.

In one of the videos, the officer and several flag bearers can be seen exchanging words. “If you set foot on this grass, I’m going to have to throw you back out of here,” Jackson said. At one point, he momentarily grabbed one of the state flags, as if pretending to take it away.

“That’s assault!” some of the people said.

“Sir, did I put my hands on you?” Jackson responded. “Thank you.”

The encounter was short, nonviolent and partly happenstance — no one seemed to be planning for a confrontation in front of the civil rights museum. But smartphones came out to record the exchange as it grew tense, and the video clips struck a nerve as they ricocheted across social media feeds.

Jackson was fired on Monday. He said that he did not get many details about the decision because, having worked for the Capitol Police for only about two months, he was still on probation.

But the department called him on Wednesday to rehire him, he said, and he suspects the social media backlash played a role. He expects to return to work after the suspension is over — this time on the midnight shift, and at a different building.

“They put me in the dark until things quiet down, I’m assuming,” he said in a phone interview Wednesday. A Capitol Police spokesman would not comment on the episode, citing a department policy not to discuss personnel issues.

The state flag of Mississippi has been a subject of contention for years. Some say it should be changed because it recalls a confederacy that fought to preserve slavery. “I think it’s disgusting that we are the lone state standing with this horrible image,” said Othor Cain, a newspaper editor who was among the first to identify Jackson in the video and contact him.

Others say the flag represents the state’s history and has the support of its people. Bryant Hargroue, who participated in the parade in Jackson, said the banner should not be associated with slavery and was supported by 65 percent of the population in a 2001 vote.

He filmed the encounter on Saturday and took issue with Jackson’s behavior. “This is not a color thing to me,” he said. “It’s the way he was out there acting in front of women and children.”

Jackson said he was trying to do his job and did not intend to make a political statement about the state flag. But he said he was grateful to the people who supported him, many of whom saw the termination as a sign of systemic racism.

“I thought it just reeked of white supremacy,” Carlos E. Moore, a lawyer based in Grenada, Mississippi, said in a phone interview Wednesday. “There are two sets of rules in Mississippi still, and it’s up to civil rights lawyers like myself to continue to fight the good fight.” Moore has been criticizing the flag for years; he said the issue became especially urgent after a white supremacist killed nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, prompting South Carolina to remove the Confederate battle flag from its Statehouse.

He filed a lawsuit to change Mississippi’s flag in 2016, but it failed last November when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to take up the case. He said he got death threats as a result of his efforts, which “lets me know that that flag is about hate. It’s not about heritage.”

Today, some government buildings and museums in Mississippi — including the civil rights museum — do not fly the banner. But it remains an official symbol of the state.

Asked his thoughts about the state flag, Jackson demurred. “I’m trying not to go into details with it, because of the fact that I’m back on the job now,” he said.

He added that he would rather not leave his post at the civil rights museum or switch to an overnight shift, “but the bills have to be paid.”