Former Ole Miss guard Blake Hinson now claims that the Confederate emblem on the Mississippi State flag played a part in his reasons for transferring to Iowa State.
“To make a general statement, it was time to go and leave Ole Miss,” Hinson told the Daytona Beach News-Journal. “I’m proud not to represent that flag anymore and to not be associated with anything representing the Confederacy.
“I felt like it was the best option for me,” Hinson added. “There wasn’t a real science that went into it. I looked into the schools and the play style, and I thought I fit best in Iowa State’s system.”
Despite the state’s flag, though, Hinson admitted that he couldn’t remember a single time he faced racism on the Ole Miss campus.
The 6-foot-7 Hinson averaged 10.1 points and 4.6 rebounds per game in 2019 and is set to join the Iowa Cyclones once they resume playing after the coronavirus scare ends.
Like many other institutions, Ole Miss is already beginning the process of purging its history. For instance, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning will relocate a Confederate statue, erected in 1906, that stands outside the school’s administration building. And others are calling for the school’s nickname of “The Rebels” to be reexamined.
The state is also taking action after the NCAA, the governing body of college sports, added a rule claiming that states with Confederate imagery on flags (of which Mississippi is the only one) could be denied championship games. The state legislature is now looking to begin the process of removing the Confederate Southern Cross from its flag.
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