On episode #250 of his podcast, the BobbyCast, Bobby Bones chatted with Charlie Worsham about his call for his home state of Mississippi to change the state flag, which bears the likeness of a Confederate flag. Worsham shared his stance on the issue on Thursday, July 25th by retweeting fellow Mississippi resident Faith Hill’s impassioned plea for the change, writing, “yes. thank you, Faith.”
Worsham gets emotional when talking about the reasoning for this belief, explaining that his own father observed the racism of the south firsthand when he was a junior in high school in Grenada, MS. Worsham says that on the first day of allowing Black students to attend the school, his father witnessed a crowd of people waiting outside to beat the students and even saw a student get his leg broken while police failed to intervene.
“The thing about the Mississippi flag is that the people who were beating those students were waving that flag,” says Worsham.
He continues, saying that even though he is the descendant of a Confederate soldier, he doesn’t see pride in waving a flag that features the symbol of the Confederacy. He also clarifies that his stance on changing the flag does not negate the pride he has for his state as a whole, but that he wants all people to feel welcome in his state.
“I am proud of my home state. There’s so much to be proud of,” he says. “I’ve got friends from Texas, and they wave that flag proudly, and I want to be able to do the same thing. I want to be able to invite my friends to Mississippi, and for those of them who aren’t white, that flag is a scary thing. Whatever reason someone might have to keep it, to me, it just doesn’t outweigh the fact that it really has been a symbol of hate for a long time.”
In addition to talking about the flag issue, Charlie and Bobby chatted about Vince Gill’s song, “Black And White,” which appears on Gill’s Okie album and was written by Gill and Worsham. The song, which calls for people to work together, came out of a conversation that was sparked after Worsham asked Gill, “How’s your heart?”
“For him, someone who lived through the ‘60s like my dad did, he saw firsthand the hate, but also the ability for a whole lot of people to come together in unity and work for positive change,” he says of writing the song. “I think we have this tendency to think that things were better ‘back when,’ and I think the reason for that is life is always a struggle. Being in a country and a community and a society is always going to be a struggle, but over time, the really nasty parts sort of fade away and we remember and hold up the beautiful things.”
Bobby and Charlie also chatted about Charlie’s debut at the Opry at 12 years old and the possibility of both of them running for political office someday. To hear their full conversation and more from Bobby, listen to episode #250 of the BobbyCast.
