COLUMBIA, S.C. — More than 50 years after South Carolina raised a Confederate flag at its Statehouse to protest the civil rights movement, the rebel banner will be removed Friday in a state where such a reversal seemed unthinkable a month ago.
The flag will be pulled down from the Capitol’s front lawn and the flagpole it flies on during a ceremony at 10 a.m. Friday, said Chaney Adams, a spokeswoman for Republican Gov. Nikki Haley. Then, the banner will be taken to the Confederate Relic Room for display.
Haley will sign the bill — which passed the state House early Thursday after 13 hours of debate — at 4 p.m. Thursday in the Statehouse lobby. The measure requires that the flag come down within 24 hours of her signature.
After the House passed the bill, there were hugs, tears and high fives in the chamber. Members snapped selfies and pumped their fists. But some expressed sadness that part of their heritage is being threatened.
Hours after the vote, Republican Rep. Jonathon Hill said he feared the move could be part of a regional or nationwide campaign targeting Confederate and Civil War-era history.
“Hopefully it ends here, and we move forward, and we can put all of this behind us,” said Hill, one of 27 House members who opposed removing the flag on a key vote. He said he won’t attend Friday’s ceremony because of obligations in his district.
The flag was largely retired after the Civil War, but was flown over the dome of South Carolina’s Capitol in 1961 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the war. There it stayed, representing an official protest of the civil rights movement, until mass protests led to a deal in 2000 to move it to its current location, atop a 30-foot pole in front of the Statehouse.
The push to bring it down altogether was revived after nine black churchgoers, including state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, were gunned down during Bible study at the historic Emanuel African Episcopal Church in Charleston on June 17.
Police said the white gunman’s motivation was racial hatred. Then, photos surfaced of the suspect, Dylann Roof, posing with Confederate flags and other Civil War symbols, and burning an American flag. Roof has yet to enter a plea to nine counts of murder, but Republicans who long courted Confederate flag supporters quickly abandoned them after the killings.
“I am 44 years old. I never thought I’d see this moment. I stand with people who never thought they would see this as well,” said House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, who called the victims martyrs. “It’s emotional for us not just because it came down, but why it came down.”
Republican Rep. Rick Quinn, who offered an amendment that would have delayed the flag’s removal, was satisfied after lawmakers promised to find money for a special display in the state’s Confederate Relic Room for the flag being removed, as well as the one taken down from the dome in 2000.
“It was done in a way that was a win to everyone,” said Quinn, who voted for the bill.
Back-to-back votes enabling the flag’s removal came around 1 a.m. Thursday after more than 13 hours of passionate and contentious debate.
As House members deliberated, there were tears of anger and shared memories of Civil War ancestors. Black Democrats, frustrated at being asked to show grace to Civil War soldiers as the debate wore on, warned that the state was embarrassing itself.
Changing the Senate bill could have meant taking weeks or even months to remove the flag, perhaps blunting momentum that has grown since the church massacre.
Rep. Jenny Horne, noting that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was her ancestor, scolded fellow Republicans for stalling the debate with dozens of amendments.
She cried as she remembered Pinckney’s funeral and his widow, who was hiding with one of their daughters in a church office as the gunman fired dozens of shots.
“For the widow of Sen. Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury and I will not be a part of it!” she screamed into a microphone.
She said later that didn’t intend to speak, but got frustrated with her party members.
Opponents of removing the flag talked about grandparents who passed down family treasures and lamented that the flag had been “hijacked” or “abducted” by racists.
Rep. Mike Pitts, who remembered playing with a Confederate ancestor’s cavalry sword while growing up, said that for him, the flag is a reminder of how dirt-poor Southern farmers fought Yankees not because they hated blacks or supported slavery, but because their land was being invaded.
Those soldiers should be respected just as soldiers who fought in the Middle East or Afghanistan, he said, recalling his own military service. Pitts then turned to a lawmaker he called a dear friend, recalling how his black colleague nearly died in Vietnam.
But black lawmakers had their own family stories to tell. Joe Neal talked about tracing his family back to four brothers. They were brought to America in chains and bought by a slave owner named Neal, who changed their last names and pulled them apart from their families.
“The whole world is asking, is South Carolina really going to change, or will it hold to an ugly tradition of prejudice and discrimination and hide behind heritage as an excuse for it,” Neal said.
Other Democrats suggested that any delay would enable Ku Klux Klan members to dance around the flag during a rally they planned for July 18.
Instead, Democrats invoked a phrase Gov. Haley often says, calling it “a great day in South Carolina.”
The governor issued her own statement: “It is a new day in South Carolina, a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and on,” she said.
