The flag, which flew above the State House before it was moved in 2000 to a spot next to the Confederate Soldier Monument, had long been a subject of deep disagreements and public protests. But it was the June 17 massacre at the church, which the authorities have described as a hate crime, that provoked Ms. Haley and scores of other elected officials in both parties to demand the battle flag’s removal.
The flag will be housed at the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, a state-supported museum near the Capitol, and its pole will be removed from the grounds of the State House.
“This is a high moment for South Carolina,” said Jack Bass, an emeritus professor of social sciences and humanities at the College of Charleston. “It’s significant. It could be a turning point.”
Scores of people gathered Friday morning near the flag, which the authorities barricaded on Thursday afternoon. Some stood with signs or shirts opposing the flag. Some waited through the morning heat in lawn chairs they brought from home.
“I thought about all of the African-Americans that lost their lives because of the flag, because of the hatred that this flag symbolizes,” said Theresa Burgess, a 48-year-old kindergarten teacher from Florence County who arrived at the State House a little after 6 a.m. “I knew that a lot of Americans would have loved to be here today.”
Ms. Burgess, a native of South Carolina, said the flag’s removal would bring an end to “decades of racism, decades of what this flag symbolizes.”
“I am overwhelmed,” she said as she sat the base of a statue of Ben Tillman, a South Carolina governor and a white supremacist. “I am overjoyed. I almost can’t even talk about it without becoming emotional.”
The removal of the symbol could have long-term practical impact. South Carolina has worked hard to lure multinational corporations to fuel job growth in recent years, and Mr. Bass and others believe that the state could have an easier time with that task now that the flag – revered by many white Southerners, but reviled by African Americans and many others around the world as a vestige of a cruel and backward era – is down.
The removal of the flag had been a longstanding goal among liberals here. But Mr. Bass and many other students of the state’s past and present said it was far from clear if this rare liberal win in a state thoroughly dominated by conservative Republicans will result in other policy changes sought by liberals and Civil Rights activists, such as an expansion of Medicaid under President Obama’s health plan, which could provide health coverage to thousands of residents. Ms. Haley, a Republican and staunch fiscal conservative, has opposed the idea.
Regardless, the battle flag’s rapid removal represents, by any measure, a stunningly swift turning point for a drama that has engulfed the state for decades.
The flag was originally raised above the capitol dome in the early 1960s at the height of anti-integration sentiment in the white South. It was moved in 2000 to a spot next to the Confederate Soldier Monument after an impassioned period of protest, and continued to be one of the most divisive issues in the state.
It was the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. that provoked Ms. Haley and scores of other elected officials in both parties to demand the battle flag’s removal.
The outrage over the shootings here — which cut across racial lines — and the widespread admiration for the families of the victims, who stunned many by publicly forgiving the suspect, Dylann Roof, created a unique atmosphere that not only changed the mind of Ms. Haley, who had previously supported the flag, but also helped the bill calling for its removal sail through the State Senate. The Senate, like the state House, is controlled by a Republican party that is largely white.
The bill ran into serious trouble in the state House, gaining approval there only after a complex and passion-fueled 15-hour debate Wednesday in which lawmakers, in speech after speech, invoked both the sacrifices of the Confederate dead and the indignities of segregation.
When Ms. Haley signed the bill Thursday, she praised lawmakers and declared that the flag’s removal should be seen as a historic moment. “I am very proud to say that it is a great day in South Carolina,” she said.
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–The New York Times
