A Mississippi state legislator is nostalgic for the old days when the state flag proudly displayed the Confederacy’s stars and bars – a symbol of White supremacy and hatred to Black Mississipians.

“That flag, a lot of our people fought and died under that flag,” Republican Sen. Kathy Chism said during a June 3 political speech at the Belmont Political Rally in Tishomingo County, Miss., the Mississippi Free Press reports.

Mississippi’s state flag, which was adopted in 1894 and featured the Confederate battle insignia, was retired in January 2021 and replaced with a flag featuring a magnolia flower and stars, according to CNN.

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of Mississippi voters approved the design change after state lawmakers passed a referendum bill that Gov. Tate Reeves signed into law, making Mississippi the last state in the country to remove the racially divisive symbol from the state flag. Lawmakers voted against the backdrop of nationwide social justice protests against the murder of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police officers.

According to the Daily Journal, Chism, who opposed the redesign, made a false claim in a Facebook post about the flag’s origins as the state legislature prepared to debate the issue. She wrote that a Black Confederate soldier designed the original state flag that featured the Confederate battle insignia.

“I can only imagine how proud he was that his art, his flag design was chosen to represent our State and now we want to strip him of his pride, his hard work. I’m sure he put a lot of thought into this design,” the Daily Journal quoted Chism’s June 2020 post.

Actually, Edward Scudder, a white state senator, is widely credited with designing the flag “to perpetuate in a legal and lasting way that dear battle flag under which so many of our people had so gloriously fought,” the Daily Journal reported, citing Mississippi History Now.