The group of professors that have spoken out this week about the Mississippi flag has spoken words of wisdom.

The 34 professors, including many from Ole Miss,  released a statement saying that Mississippi legislators adopted the flag in 1894 to assert white supremacy.

“The threat of racist mob violence has been present throughout American history, and, as seen by the flag-wielding neo-Nazis and racist sympathizers in Charlottesville, the use of Confederate emblems echoes the racist reasoning of whites in Mississippi at the end of the 19th century, who used terror to impose minority rule,” they write.

The professors further argue that they by no means want to erase history.

They, however, “demand a flag that represents the entirety of our state’s history and all its people, and we are encouraged that some state leaders, both conservatives and progressives, have declared it is time for the current flag to come down.”

We agree, of course. This flag does nothing to present the state in a positive light nationally and it sends poor signals inside the state.

It was not even our original flag, since as the professor’s note, the state flag was changed in 1894 to assert white supremacy.

In 2017, there’s a different message we want Mississippi to project.