A multi-racial, multi-generational throng of more than 50,000 people packed downtown Columbia for a King Day rally a decade ago, demanding the Confederate flag be removed from atop the State House dome.
The rally, the culmination of 38 years of resentment and anger by many of the marchers, was a statement of the determined hopes of a few people who believed that what was had little bearing on what could be.
Their efforts started a tradition that will be followed with Monday's King Day events. But when those thousands gathered in Columbia a decade ago, they were not merely offering up a reminder about Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream of racial harmony and fair play.
They had a concrete demand, one that - in the eyes of some - would be met a few months later.
HOW IT BEGAN
J.T. McLawhorn remembers that it all started with a telephone call he didn't feel like answering.
McLawhorn, president and chief executive officer of the Columbia Urban League, was at his home, sick with a bad cold, when the telephone rang in October of 1999.
He told his wife he did not want to speak to anyone, but she said he would want to take this particular call.
It was Phil Desilet, a white social worker and civil rights activist. Desilet, like many others, wanted the Confederate flag removed from the State House dome.
The flag had flown there since 1962, having been hoisted, ostensibly, to commemorate the centennial of the Civil War.
Few doubted, however, the real purpose in raising the flag was to poke a finger in the eye of the growing civil rights movement, which was stripping away various aspects of segregation and racial injustice.
The flag - reviled by many African-Americans as a symbol of slavery and violent oppression and seen as a symbol of Southern pride and heritage by many whites - had proved resistant to efforts to bring it down.
Church leaders had called for it to be brought down. Business leaders saw it as a statement of backwardness and intolerance that could harm the state economically.
Political figures, the NAACP, McLawhorn and the Urban League had pressed for the flag to be brought down.
But in the nearly four decades since it was raised, the flag evolved into a sort of political litmus test that seemed to cement its place atop the State House.
Democrats, hoping to appeal to black voters, were all but duty-bound to support bringing the flag down. That was often tough duty for white Democrats, many of whom knew they would anger swaths of white voters if they called for the removal of the flag.
In deference to those same white voters, Republicans almost uniformly backed flying the flag - at least publicly - with one exception that proved costly.
Limited black political clout meant the flag - the symbol of a would-be nation formed to preserve slavery - would stay where it flew.
TIRED OF TALKING
In an opinion piece written for The State newspaper, McLawhorn said Desilet wanted to pull the flag out of the political box that protected its place above the State House.
Desilet, McLawhorn wrote, told him he wanted to mobilize "a broad, diverse, interracial coalition to petition the governor and members of the General Assembly to remove the Confederate flag from the State House dome and chambers."
McLawhorn's recollection of how the King Day rally was started differs some from that of James Gallman, named state conference chairman of the NAACP in 1998.
Gallman said he had had a conversation with Al and Liz Deas, who worked for the Cayce/West Columbia branch of the NAACP.
The Deases, Gallman said, told him they were tired of merely talking about the flag and wanted something done about it.
That spurred him to have Lonnie Randolph, president of the Columbia branch of the NAACP, form a committee to organize a rally in opposition to the flag.
Desilet is dead. Liz Deas said it is possible that she or her husband talked to Gallman about the flag but she does not remember such a conversation.
Whether the idea came from Desilet or from the Deases or from some other source, a committee was formed and the idea of a march came to life.
King Day rallies since 2000 largely have been the work of the NAACP and a few partners. But 13 different groups were on the organizing committee of the 2000 rally.
Meetings were held at Benedict College. Its president, David Swinton, was on the organizing committee.
McLawhorn and Swinton led a steering committee vote to have a march and rally. But Swinton argued for a vote of approval from a statewide group, which called itself the Assembly of African American Leaders.
"We had hopes of doing a major rally," Swinton said. "We couldn't do that with just ourselves. It was not our personal movement. It was a movement of the people."
McLawhorn said he and Swinton met with white business leaders to discuss the idea of a march on Columbia.
"They said, 'We are against all these people coming to South Carolina,'" McLawhorn said. "And, they said, 'If anything happens, we're going to hold you all responsible.'
"Dr. Swinton assured them that we would not be involved in anything subversive and that the end-game would be a positive for South Carolina because the Confederate flag was an impediment."
'THE SPIRITUAL ZONE'
Just how many people actually would show up was still an open question.
Cynthia Hardy, then vice president for communications at the Urban League, would have something to do with that.
She answered questions from the media and participated in a statewide tour to encourage people to attend the rally.
"The thought was, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could get 10,000 people? Wouldn't that be great?'" Hardy said.
Hardy's husband, Jim Hardy IV, who runs a branding company, came up with a name - King Day at the Dome - and a logo for the rally, featuring a vertical image of the State House dome set against the name and date of the rally.
Cynthia and Jim Hardy got an early indication of how things might go when almost 400 members of the media asked for credentials to cover the event.
"I was just blown away by the national media," Cynthia Hardy said.
Bigger, more satisfying surprises would come on King Day.
Predictions on the number of people who would attend the rally ranged from a thousand or two to 20,000 people, organizers said.
Cynthia Hardy got to the State House early for some set-up work. She could not see what was happening at Zion Baptist Church on Washington Street, where marchers were gathering.
"I burst into tears when they told me the streets were already filled as far as the eye could see," she said. "What a tremendous statement. What a big voice. I just thought, 'Wow. It doesn't get any bigger than this.'"
There is no precise count of the people who came to the march and the rally.
But most now say 50,000 to 70,000 people - far more than what most expected - participated.
"People were in a spiritual zone," McLawhorn said. "It was reminiscent of the civil rights marches."
Cynthia Hardy, now host of the "On Point" radio talk show, said the march remains a pivotal moment for her.
"It was one of the highlights of my career," she said. "It was just tremendous."
'I ... FOUND A BROTHER'
The Rev. Brenda Kneece, executive minister of the S.C. Christian Action Council, had long called for the flag to be brought down and had participated in some of the rally's organizing meetings.
On King Day, Kneece, who is white, said she was moved by the surging crowd to a spot next to a black man, a social worker from St. Matthews.
The two began to talk, and Kneece said she learned that the man knew and had worked with her brother-in-law.
As the man talked, he struggled to hold up a large NAACP flag and keep his two small children from being swept away by the crowd.
Kneece said she took hold of the man's coat, shielding the smallest child between them, while the other child held on to her.
Linked, the four of them marched toward the State House.
"In that crowd of 50,000 people, I had found a brother," Kneece said.
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