‘Truly miraculous’: How SC House furled the Confederate flag

At a few minutes before midnight Wednesday, S.C. House Speaker Jay Lucas handed his cellphone to state Rep. Rick Quinn, who had just walked into in a cramped meeting room to discuss the ongoing fight to remove the Confederate flag from State House grounds.

Negotiations had stalled after 12 hours of debate when Quinn insisted on new demands that Democrats and some Republicans feared would prevent the divisive banner’s removal from State House grounds. The Lexington Republican wanted assurances the flag would be displayed honorably at its new home.

Taking the phone, Quinn heard the gravelly voice of Senate President Pro Tempore Hugh Leatherman.

Leatherman, a Florence Republican, promised to encourage the Senate to take up resolutions later that would ensure funding for the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, where the flag eventually will go on public display.

Leatherman’s assurance, combined with a pledge by Democrats not to change other Confederate monuments, convinced Quinn to abandon his demands. The debate, slowed for hours, began to move forward quickly.

An hour later at 1 a.m. Thursday, the House voted 94-20 to bring the flag down after more than five decades at the Capitol.

“At that point, you had the leader of the Senate, speaker of the House, (and the House) minority leader all telling you they were going to support the Relic Room,” Quinn said.

With the bill’s passage in the House, the flag will come down Friday.

The flag’s removal ends a whirlwind of change that started when a gunman killed nine African-Americans at a Charleston church and thrust the state into a debate about whether the divisive banner – seen as a racist symbol to some, heritage to others — should remain at the State House.

Throughout the debate, Quinn did not put up the only roadblock to bringing the flag down.

House Republicans pushed to replace the Confederate flag with a less-known Civil War battle flag or the S.C. state flag as a way to honor the Confederate dead.

Absurd amendments – such as removing all the other monuments on the Capitol grounds – came and went.

And as midnight approached, a vote on removing the Confederate flag seemed remote.

Gov. Nikki Haley and others lawmakers wanted the flag gone by week’s end. They got their wish.

“The fact that it took us only one day to do it ... is truly miraculous and testimony to the House,” Lucas said.

The catalyst

Calls for the flag’s removal quickly followed the June 17 massacre of nine African-Americans, including state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, during a Bible study at a Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. Authorities said the shooting was a hate crime.

When pictures surfaced online of the accused shooter posing with the Confederate flag, a wave of national political and business leaders started calling for the banner’s removal. A friend of the accused shooter, Dylann Roof, said the 21-year-old from the Columbia area wanted to start a race war.

But at Roof’s bond hearing two days after the shooting, victims’ families expressed love and forgiveness toward the alleged shooter — an example lawmakers and civil rights leaders have praised.

When Haley attended Emanuel’s first service since the shooting, she had already made up her mind — the Confederate flag needed to come down.

The next day, June 22, she stood with top S.C. political leaders at the State House to make her stand public.

Demands to furl the banner – and national attention on South Carolina – continued to build through the week. That Friday, President Barack Obama reiterated the need for removing the flag when he gave the eulogy for Pinckney.

The Senate introduced and passed a bill to remove the Confederate flag and flagpole from its location near the Confederate Soldier Monument, setting into motion something that flag opponents have been trying to accomplish for 15 years. A compromise in 2000 lowered the flag from the State House dome but put it on the grounds.

The Senate approved the flag-removal bill on Tuesday with a 36-3 final vote.

Soon after the tally, Pinckney’s widow, Jennifer, entered the Senate chamber. Her arrival punctuated the high emotions that lawmakers felt in the vote.

“She (Pinckney’s widow) continues to be our rock,” state Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, said. “Clem is smiling down on us ... he would have been very proud of the way this Senate has responded.”

Resistance from the start

But the Confederate flag-removal bill faced early opposition in the House because some Republicans wanted to find another way to honor the Confederate dead.

State Rep. Mike Pitts, R-Laurens, who recalled hearing about relatives who fought for the Confederacy while growing up, put up more than 25 amendments that he used to extend the debate.

Most gained no traction. But two of Pitts’ amendments that would have replaced the battle flag with another banner narrowly missed passage.

The close votes showed support for a possible changes on the Senate bill that would have extended the debate into the following week. The Senate would not accept any changes.

But most of Pitts’ amendments went nowhere. As proposal after proposal was ruled out of order Wednesday, he sighed, “I’m starting to understand how (Confederate Gen. Robert E.) Lee felt at Appomattox.”

The Quinn effect

The House spent more than eight hours on amendments members rejected but had slowed the debate.

Lucas said he never had any doubt lawmakers would approve removing the flag, but members deserved to have a robust debate.

“When you do something as historic as this, you want to give everyone a chance to be heard,” Lucas said.

State Rep. Jenny Horne, a Dorchester Republican who said she was descendant of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, had enough. She delivered an explosive appeal to her colleagues.

Choking back tears and shouting, Horne said, “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. We are telling the people of Charleston, ‘We don't care about you.’ ”

When Quinn introduced his amendment, Democrats sprang to block it.

State Rep. Gilda Cobb-Hunter, D-Orangeburg, spoke often, criticizing Republican rhetoric that asked Democrats to show “grace” in allowing another Confederate-era banner to fly in the Confederate flag’s place – an “offensive” comparison, she said.

Quinn wanted to ensure, in the language of the bill, that lawmakers receive a proposal next year showing how the flag would be displayed and how much it should cost.

Democrats criticized the proposal as unnecessary. The Senate-passed bill already required an “appropriate display” for the flag. A state budget office already had estimated the display could cost between $1 million and $15 million, they said.

A rookie, an ally and Leatherman

Quinn says three things happened that convinced him to abandon his plan and let the debate move forward.

The first came from unexpected source: State Rep. Russell Ott, a Calhoun Democrat in his second year in office.

“Russell had come up to me at my desk (with a proposal),” said Quinn, in his 11th term in the House. “There was so much going on, I did not catch entirely what he was doing.”

Quinn later learned that Ott had proposed Quinn’s plan in a resolution not tied to the flag bill. The solution, Ott said, would allow the House to pass the flag bill, bringing the banner down quickly, while creating another legislative path forward for Quinn’s proposal.

House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Richland also helped, Quinn said, by promising not to mount efforts to remove any other monuments from the State House grounds. But Rutherford has said reading material about the statues at the State House need to reflect who the leaders were instead of “white-wash(ing) our history.”

Finally came Leatherman, who was at his Florence home watching the debate when Lucas called.

“I’ve said all along that we intend to provide all the resources that would be needed” to display the flag appropriately, Leatherman told The State on Thursday.

His words helped end a 50-plus-year battle that concludes Friday.

This story was originally published July 10, 2015 at 12:09 AM with the headline "‘Truly miraculous’: How SC House furled the Confederate flag."