When Malcolm Allred sees the Mississippi flag waving in the breeze, he feels a twinge of nostalgia.

“I’m proud of it. I love it,” said Allred, owner of Adolph Rose Antiques. “I feel more allegiance to the Mississippi flag than I do the American flag.”

Allred had at least two ancestors who fought for the Confederacy and is a staunch supporter of keeping the embattled Mississippi flag which contains symbols meant to honor his ancestors and other Confederate soldiers.

Debate over the Mississippi flag and other Confederate imagery has raged since a 21-year-old accused killer in South Carolina took photos of himself with the flag before killing nine people inside Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston S.C.

Allred said the debate over the flag amounts to political wrangling by politicians and activists pushing a liberal agenda and re-writing history, noting that he does not feel history books properly represent the cause of the war.

“The process of re-education has finally reached its goal. The battle flag is but one of the tools used by this administration and its liberal, politically correct accomplices to divide this country and transform it from a moral republic into a socialist one,” he said.

When former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove appointed a committee to examine changing the flag in 2001, Allred was one of the traditional flag’s biggest supporters. He does not view the flag as a racist symbol or think it supports the idea of slavery, which he says was a grim mistake by the confederacy.

“More than 90 percent of the Confederacy’s soldiers owned no slaves, so to imply that they fought for slavery is ludicrous,” Allred said.

Another of the flag’s major supporters is Lamar Roberts, owner of the Old Depot Museum. He campaigned to save the flag in 2001 when an alternate flag containing a circle of stars on a blue field was proposed.

“My mind hasn’t changed any,” Roberts said. “It’s history. Everything we’ve got going on nowadays is just out of sight.”

The largest group that defended the flag in 2001 was the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans. A member of the group who was also a state Senator designed the flag in 1894.

Local SCV members deferred comment on the flag to the division’s public relations officer who did not return e-mails seeking comment.

The group did say they would continue to fly the state flag in Soldiers’ Rest in Cedar Hill Cemetery where more than 5,000 Confederate soldiers are buried.