I think all of you non-Mississippians are missing the point here. This shouldn't be a national news story. The state flag has come down all over the state in the last decade.
In predominately black areas, and in well-educated predominately white areas (the college towns, Coast, and Jackson suburbs), the state flag is nowhere to be found. Colleges don't fly it. Schools don't fly it. City Halls don't fly it. County courthouses don't fly it. Airports don't fly it. Businesses that fly U.S. flags don't fly it.
Clarksdale is a majority black city in the Delta. How the hell was there still a state flag up there in 2017? Sure, a lot of rural mostly white counties still display it at government buildings, but that may have been the last one left in the Delta. Why it took until now for the national news to pick up on this is beyond me.
There is a flag store in Northeast Jackson on I-55 that flies a whole bunch of flags in front of it, including a state flag. That's probably the only one on a pole I've seen in years. Granted, I don't venture out into the rural areas very often, but still. We have a consultant who comes in at work several times a year for a week and last time he and I were talking about flags for some reason, and he asked what Mississippi's looks like. I was sheepishly like "uh ... you don't know?" and showed him
this webpage, and he was flabbergasted. Despite having spent over 100 nights in Mississippi and driven by plenty of post offices, courthouses, government buildings, etc., he'd never seen the flag before.