South Carolina Removes Confederate Flag from Capitol
The government of South Carolina has chosen to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol after public outcry that followed the massacre of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist.
The New York Times reports that the flag was only removed after 13 tense hours of debate in the state's House of Representatives with the vote to take down the flag taking place at 1 a.m. Gov. Nikki Haley used nine different pens to sign the bill, a symbolic reference to the nine victims massacred by Dylann Roof. The pens will be given to the victims of the families, whose personal tragedies were the impetus for the removal of the flag.
Haley was actually a long-time supporter of having the flag on the grounds of the capitol, but a week after the shooting, as public and political pressure mounted, she made an explicit call for the flag to come down.
The crowd of legislators and citizens who were gathered around Haley as she signed the bill erupted into loud and raucous cheers after the signing was complete, according to the Times.
People began to demand the flag be removed when images found online showed Roof waving the Confederate flag and the flag of apartheid South Africa while also burning an American flag and brandishing a weapon.
Among the voices calling for the flag to come down were Jeb Bush, who is running for president, Mitt Romney, and even sitting South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, another Republican contender for president.
The flag did not always fly on the grounds of the capitol in the years after the Civil War, in which South Carolina was the first state to withdraw from the union, and was only put up at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s.
