Mississippi’s Good Ole Boy GOP Governor Declares April As Confederate Heritage Month 

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves declared April will be celebrated as Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, keeping a 31-year-old tradition alive. 

The proclamation came from Beauvoir, the museum and home of Confederate President Jefferson Davis. In a Facebook post dated Apr. 12, Reeves pushed the declaration to “honor all who lost their lives in this war.” “Whereas, as we honor all who lost their lives in this war, it is important for all Americans to reflect upon our nation’s past, to gain insight from our mistakes and successes, and to come to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us,” the proclamation read. 

“Now, therefore, I, Tate Reeves, Governor of the State of Mississippi, hereby proclaim the month of April 2024 as Confederate Heritage Month in the State of Mississippi.”

Owned and operated by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, a neo-Confederate organization promoting “Lost Cause” ideology, Beauvoir received $100,000 annually from the State of Mississippi for development and upkeep.

This will be the fourth year in a row that Reeves declared the proclamations since 2020. He defended the controversial measures in 2021, saying both past Democratic and Republican governors have signed them. “For the last 30 years, five Mississippi governors—Republicans and Democrats alike—have signed a proclamation recognizing the statutory state holiday and identifying April as Confederate Heritage Month,” he said in a statement at the time. 

“Gov. Reeves also signed the proclamation because he believes we can all learn from our history.”

Following the removal of the state’s Confederate-themed flag from state buildings in 2020 after social justice protests, lawmakers voted to replace the flag. Reeves pledged not to support such efforts but still signed the bill to retire it, calling it “a law to turn a page in Mississippi today.” 

However, he rejected that systemic racism existed and criticized Black Lives Matter protests. “It is fashionable in some quarters to say our ancestors were all evil. I reject that notion. I also reject the elitist worldview that these United States are anything but the greatest nation in the history of mankind,” Reeves proclaimed. 

“I reject the mobs tearing down statues of our history—north and south, Union and Confederate, founding fathers and veterans. I reject the chaos and lawlessness, and I am proud it has not happened in our state.”

Some leaders feel celebrating confederacy is a bad look in part on Reeves. When CNN’s Victor Blackwell read part of the statement from the governor, he looped in former Democratic governor Ray Mabus to get his opinion, who started by saying, “Well, first, I didn’t do it when I was governor.” 

“And, second, Confederate Heritage? Really? The heritage that I think of with the Confederacy is slavery, is treason, and is losing. So, which one of those heritages are we really honoring here? But it’s all part of that lost cause narrative, the ‘Moonlight and Magnolias’ that came about a few years after the Civil War in an attempt to reassert white supremacy…..But what it does is incredibly hurtful, it is incredibly harmful, and it honors something that we should learn about, know about, but definitely, definitely not honor.”

The celebration will continue on Apr. 27, when the state will observe Confederate Memorial Day as mandated by State law.

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