Finally, racist flag to come down in South Carolina

Larry Hogan said Thursday that he supports taking some steps to address concerns over the Confederate flag and whether it is a historic symbol or racist reminder, but extreme measures only represented “political correctness run amok”.

Haley moved first, calling on South Carolina lawmakers to vote the flag down, and very quickly thereafter, other Republican lawmakers who have long cultivated the votes of Confederate flag supporters were announcing that other Civil War symbols no longer deserve places of honour.

“And so what we saw was another action, and that action is that the Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina State House”.

The mass shooting at a historic black church last month, by a suspect who had posed in photos with the U.S. Civil War-era battle flag, led to the change. Opponents of the flag have called for years for its removal from Statehouse grounds, and South Carolina lawmakers this week voted to take it down.

In a late night maneuver on Wednesday, Republicans aimed to push language into a funding bill that would allow the display and sale of Confederate battle flag imagery at cemeteries on federal land.

It was the emotional memory of those lost that many say shifted the momentum during more than 14-hours of discussion, debate and legislative wrangling on the South Carolina House floor that ended with passage of the bill authorizing the flag’s removal.

The flag is scheduled to be taken down Friday morning at 10 a.m. It will be stored in the Relic Room at the South Carolina State Museum alongside other artifacts important to the state’s history.

The flag was raised above the capitol dome in 1961-officially to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War, which began in South Carolina, but unofficially as a gesture of opposition to the civil rights movement. “We’re a state that believes in respect”, Haley said before signing the bill. The amendments passed as part of a Department of Interior spending bill, which was set for a vote on Thursday.

The current bill’s strong bipartisan backing marks a dramatic turnaround in sentiment from only a few months ago, largely attributed to a national wave of sympathy for the nine victims at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church in Charleston, about two hours drive southeast of the state capital Columbia. Barry was from South Carolina, served in the marines in Vietnam with Burke and was a double amputee.

Haley signed the bill with several different pens. “We heard about the true honor of heritage and tradition”.

Moments after South Carolina governor Nikki Haley signed the bill Thursday, the NCAA released a statement indicated that the state would now be eligible to bid for NCAA-sponsored events. However, when Clementa C. Pinckney, a state senator and the minister of the church, lay in state in the capitol at the end of June, the flag still flew outside.

“For the widow of Sen”.

Rep. Joe Neal traces his ancestry to four brothers, brought to America in chains and bought by a slave owner named Neal who pulled them apart from their families.