JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi voters are deciding whether to accept a new state flag to replace a Confederate-themed banner that lawmakers retired months ago as part of a national reckoning over racial injustice.

A single design is on the ballot for a yes-or-no vote. It has the state flower, a magnolia, encircled by stars and the phrase, “In God We Trust.”

If a majority of voters say yes, the flag will become an official state symbol.

If they say no, the old flag will not return. Instead, a commission will design another new flag to go on the ballot in 2021. The new design would have the same rules: It must include “In God We Trust” and it cannot incorporate the Confederate battle emblem that's widely condemned as racist.

“I think it’s a shame that it’s come down to that in America, to where people want to change the history of what America really is," said Sheila Jarrell, 65, of Picayune, who works part-time at a family-owned home furnishings gift shop. “I don’t think it was meant to harm anyone, the flag that we had or that other states did have."

Joan Martin, 79, a retired registered nurse from Picayune, said she voted for the new flag because “I didn’t have any choice.

“There was just the one thing and I thought it looked pretty and it said ‘In God we trust,’ so I voted yes on it,” she said.

Mississippi was the last state with a flag that included the Confederate emblem — a red field topped by a blue X dotted by 13 white stars. Mississippi had used the same flag since 1894, when white supremacists in the state Legislature adopted the design amid backlash to the political clout that Black residents gained during Reconstruction.

The flag was a divisive symbol in a state with the largest percentage of Black residents.

Mississippi residents who voted in a 2001 statewide election chose to keep the old flag. But all of the state's public universities and many local governments had stopped flying it. Many made the decision after mid-2015, when a white man shot and killed nine Black people worshiping at a church in Charleston, South Carolina; he had previously posed for photos with the rebel flag.

Until this summer, a majority of Mississippi legislators were unwilling to consider changing the state flag because they considered the issue too volatile. Momentum changed as protests broke out across the U.S. after a Black man was killed in Minneapolis police custody. The final push for changing the Mississippi flag came from business, education, religious and sports groups — including, notably, the Mississippi Baptist Convention and the Southeastern Conference.

The public submitted nearly 3,000 flag designs. A nine-person commission — with members appointed by the governor, lieutenant governor and House speaker — chose the magnolia flag to go on the ballot.

The proposed design has the state flower on a dark blue background with red bars on either end. The magnolia is encircled by stars representing Mississippi as the 20th state. The flag also has a single star made of diamond shapes representing the Native American people who lived on the land before others arrived.

Separately, supporters of the old Mississippi flag are starting an initiative that could revive the old flag by putting the Confederate-themed banner and some other designs up for a statewide vote. But they face big hurdles in gathering enough signatures to get their ideas on the ballot, and their efforts could be complicated by limited public interaction during the coronavirus pandemic.

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Associated Press writer Janet McConnaughey in Picayune, Mississippi contributed.

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Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus.

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Find AP’s full election coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2020.