A small Southern town grapples with racism and identity. Battles like this could be a motivating factor in the 2018 midterms. Ocean Springs, Mississippi, is an idyllic Southern hamlet just outside Biloxi. The former fishing village sits an hour west of Mobile, Alabama, and an hour and a half east of New Orleans, Louisiana. As a coastal town it doesn’t suffer the same sweaty heat as inland, or the blistering historic racism of Jackson. Yet even here, the ghosts of Mississippi’s past rise up — along with the only U.S. state flag to still bear the emblem of the Confederacy. The city government had chosen not to fly the flag for several years. But last year, newly elected mayor Shea Dobson, a 32-year-old libertarian Republican who upset a three-term incumbent Democrat mayor to win, decided to raise the state flag once again at city hall. The move sparked outrage. “This was a shock for our community, which considers itself inclusive and open-minded,” says Lea Campbell, leader of Mississippi Rising, a nonprofit focused on civil rights and social justice issues. | 
