A unified call to shed symbol of Old South
South Carolina governor says that Confederate flag’s days numbered
“My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move our state forward in harmony, andwe can honor the nine blessed souls who are now in heaven.”
— South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley
CHARLESTON, S.C. — South Carolina’s governor declared Monday that the Confederate flag should be removed from the Statehouse grounds as she acknowledged that its use as a symbol of hatred by the man accused of killing nine black church members has made it too divisive for the state to display in such a public space.
Gov. Nikki Haley’s about-face comes just days after authorities charged Dylann Storm Roof, 21, with murder. The white man appeared in photos waving Confederate flags and burning or desecrat-
ing U.S. flags, and purportedly wrote of fomenting racial violence. Survivors told police he hurled racial insults during the attack.
“The murderer now locked up in Charleston said he hoped his actions would start a race war. We have an opportunity to show that not only was he wrong, but that just the opposite is happening,” Haley said, flanked by Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites who joined her call.
“My hope is that by removing a symbol that divides us, we can move our state forward in harmony, and we can honor the nine blessed souls who are now in heaven,” Haley said.
The massacre inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church has suddenly made removing the flag — long thought politically impossible in South Carolina — the go-to position, even for conservative Republican politicians.
Immediate support
Haley was flanked by Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, now running for president, as well as South Carolina’s junior Republican senator, Tim Scott, and Democratic Rep. Jim Clyburn, both of whom are black. Within moments, her call was echoed by the Republican Party chairman and the top GOP lawmaker, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
Haley urged the state’s GOP-led House and Senate to debate the issue no later than this summer. If not, she said she will call a special session and force them to resolve it. “I will use that authority for the purpose of the legislature removing the flag from the Statehouse grounds,” she said.
South Carolina House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford said he’s confident after talking to members of both parties that the Confederate flag will be taken down within the next two months.
“A lot of people understand this is a moment we have to respond to,” said Rep. Rick Quinn, a Republican and former House majority leader who said he will vote to take it down.
Other lawmakers proposed moving it to the staterun Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.
Making any changes to the banner requires a twothirds supermajority in both houses under the terms of a 15-year-old deal that moved it from atop the Statehouse to a position next to a monument to Confederate soldiers out front.
As recently as November 2014, a poll of 852 people by Winthrop University found 42 percent of South Carolina residents strongly believed the flag should stay, while only 26 percent strongly believed it should be removed.
But South Carolina’s population is slowly becoming more diverse, more educated, wealthier and more exposed to people from outside the state. And the pollster, Scott Huffman, predicts that his August 2015 survey will show that people who didn’t have strong feelings before “will have flipped and now prefer it to come down.”
Only a few months have passed since Haley, an Indian-American, described an opponent’s rally to bring down the flag as a campaign stunt. She claimed last year that businesses weren’t bothered despite continuing boycott demands by black groups.
“We really fixed all that,” she said, with her election as the state’s first female and first minority governor, and the election of Scott as the South’s first black U.S. senator since Reconstruction.
“The flag got appropriated by hate groups. We can’t put it in a public place where it can give any oxygen to hate-filled people,” said Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr., a Democrat.
The Confederate battle flag was placed atop the Statehouse dome in the 1960s as an official protest of the civil rights movement. After mass protests, it was moved to the grounds in 2000, as part of a compromise between a group of black lawmakers and the Republicans who have controlled South Carolina for a quarter-century.
That deal kept it flying high since the shooting. It also means that when thousands of mourners honor Emanuel’s slain senior pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, they will likely see the Confederate flag before or after filing past his coffin in the Statehouse.
Shooting aftermath
The White House said President Barack Obama respects the state of South Carolina’s authority to decide the issue but believes the flag belongs in a museum. Obama knew Pinckney personally and plans to deliver his eulogy in Charleston on Friday.
CNN reported Monday that Wal-Mart will remove all Confederate flag merchandise from its stores. The announcement is the latest indication that the flag, a symbol of the slaveholding South, has become toxic in the aftermath of a shooting last week. Walmart.com carries the Confederate flag as well as attire featuring the flag’s design, such as T-shirts and belt buckles.
Elsewhere, officials in Mississippi and Tennessee are grappling with whether to retain Old South symbols.
Mississippi voters decided by a 2-1 margin in 2001 to keep the state flag that has been used since 1894. It features the Confederate battle emblem in the upper left corner.
Republican Gov. Phil Bryant on Monday repeated his long-held position that the state should keep the flag as is.
“A vast majority of Mississippians voted to keep the state’s flag, and I don’t believe the Mississippi Legislature will act to supersede the will of the people on this issue,” Bryant said.
At the Tennessee Capitol in Nashville, a bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general and an early Ku Klux Klan leader, has sat in an alcove outside the Senate chamber for decades.
Democratic and Republican leaders are calling for the bust to be removed. Craig Fitzhugh, the state House Democratic leader, said it should go to the archives or a museum and be replaced in the Capitol by a statue of Lois DeBerry, an African-American who became the first female speaker pro tempore of the Tennessee House. Women and minorities are underrepresented in government symbols, Fitzhugh wrote.