After 54 years, Confederate flag comes down in SC

Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. The governor clapped when it was handed to the archivist.

In recent weeks, the state’s House of Representatives and Senate overwhelming voted for the removal of the flag. “It feels like we, as black people, are more united and seeing that if we all stick together, there’s going to be a change that’s made”.

Haley said: “No one should ever drive by the Statehouse and feel pain”.

Civil War re-enactor Bobby Dawson stood quietly in gray wool trousers and a long-sleeved shirt with the wool coat of the Confederate Army’s 101st South Carolina Regiment.

A special armored van will take the flag to a Confederate relic room, where it eventually will be housed in a multimillion-dollar shrine lawmakers promised to build as part of a compromise to get the bill ordering the flag’s removal through the House.

State Rep. Gary Clary, a retired Circuit Court judge from Pickens and freshman Republican lawmaker who was among the first legislators to call for the flag to come down in the wake of the shooting, brought his 13-year-old grandson Conner Pederson to witness the momentous day.

Dylann Storm Roof, the alleged shooter, reportedly displayed the Confederate flag on his car’s license plates.

Mr Obama last month delivered a eulogy at the funeral of Mr Pinckney. While many try to absorb the significance of the flag’s removal in South Carolina, resistance to other confederate symbols is growing. They say the flag became a way to reject the 1960s Civil Rights movement to achieve racial equality. The pole flying the flag came down and the flag is being placed in a museum.

“I’m thinking of those nine people today”, Haley said, referring to the nine men and women gunned down at Charleston’s African Methodist Episcopal church.

The legislature gave final passage to the bill, required before the flag could be moved, by an overwhelming majority on Thursday after three days of tense debate. The governor used nine pens to sign the bill, each of which will go to the family of a victim of the Emanuel AME church shooting on June 17.

“This legislative decision affirms the 15 years of collective advocacy of the NAACP on both the national and state level to bring down the flag, in particular our 15-year economic boycott of the state that was joined by the NCAA and UAW”, said Brooks in the statement.

States across the nation are moving on without their Confederate symbols. FBI Director James Comey outlined a series of missed opportunities and incomplete paperwork that allowed the transaction to take place. He served as a private in the South Carolina Calvary, said camp Commander Bobby Snyder.