S.C. legislator’s plea helps take down flag
In an impassioned speech, descendant of Confederate president turns tide against ‘symbol of hate,’ leading to vote to remove it
White supremacist Dylann Roof, his friends say, wanted to incite a race war. Instead, he incited a fierce debate over racism and the Confederate flag.
Less than a month after the horrific massacre in a Charleston church that Roof is accused of perpetrating, that debate came full circle as the South Carolina House weighed the fate of the Confederate flag flying in front of the state capitol.
Over 13 excruciating hours, the country watched as the ghosts of the Civil War seemed to stir once more. There was soul-searching and breast-beating, and amendments, lots of them, designed to thwart a vote.
And for a moment, it seemed as if the Confederate flag just might keep flying after all.
But then Jenny Horne decided that she had had enough.
The 42-year-old lawyer from Summerville stepped up to the lectern and delivered words so raw and impassioned they would immediately go viral on the Internet. More important, her four-minute speech would alter the course of the debate, and with it, South Carolina history.
The state where the Civil War began, where Strom Thurmond presided as governor, and father of the segregationist Dixiecrats, a state steeped proudly in history and its symbols, disavowed the most freighted symbol of them all, the Confederate flag.
“I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday,” Horne said, shouting through tears. “For the widow of Sen. Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury.”
Horne’s fiery speech, bolstered by her reminder that Confederate President Jefferson Davis was her ancestor, injected new energy into what appeared to be a flagging take-down-theflag faction and helped pave the way for a 1 a.m. vote Thursday.
Amazingly, Horne said her powerful words were not planned.
“At that point we were losing the vote. It was going south,” she said shortly after the historic vote. “If what I did changed the course of the debate, and I do believe it did, then it needed to be done. Because that flag needed to come down a long time ago.”
‘One people and one state’
Horne may have been the most impassioned speaker Wednesday night, but she wasn’t alone in sensing that South Carolina was turning an important page on its past.
State and national leaders expressed similar relief that the South Carolina House had cleared the way for the Confederate flag to come down.
“Today, as the Senate did before them, the House of Representatives has served the State of South Carolina and her people with great dignity,” said Gov. Nikki Haley on Facebook. “I’m grateful for their service and their compassion. 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 one state.”
But if South Carolina, and perhaps the South, has turned a corner, at least symbolically, it is a transformation that almost didn’t happen early Thursday. Before Horne came forward, the prospects of passing the bill were fading fast.
Her voice hoarse from shouting, Horne said she was simply fed up with the obstructionist tactics from members of her own Republican Party.
“I thought the stall tactics were childish,” she said. “It turned into an endurance contest, and we spent I don’t know how many hours doing something that the Senate did in a fraction of the time and I, quite frankly, was insulted.
“We had spent an entire day trying to slow this bill down and bog it down and force it to conference committee and drag this debate out for weeks and weeks and weeks, and I had just decided that it was time that somebody stood up and said what was the real issue here.
“The real issue is that that flag is a symbol of hate and it’s on a public ground where people, the entire state, they own that state house,” she continued. “That is public property. And to me, if that flag offends a percentage of our citizenry, including the people in Charleston, then we owed it to them to act in accordance with the Senate to take it down in a unified fashion.”
An emotional victory
Perhaps the most surprising and powerful part of Horne’s speech came when she invoked her lineage to Davis.
Horne said she resurrected Davis to cut through arguments from fellow representatives that the flag symbolized their Southern heritage.
After nearly an hour delay, the final amendment — No. 68 — failed. Senate Bill 897 passed 94-20, more than the two-thirds majority needed.
When asked how she felt knowing that she had played a large part in the effort to pass the bill, Horne paused for almost a minute before answering.
“I’m feeling … I’m trying to put in words because I don’t know that I have the adequate words,” she said.
“Being a lifelong resident of South Carolina, I never thought …,” she said, choking up. “I never thought we’d get it down in my lifetime. And I’m very proud of the men and women in the House of Representatives who had the courage to vote to take it down. So for that, I’m grateful.
“I am proud of the people who did the right thing. And I am proud of South Carolina.”