Five years later, watch our videos of the day SC lowered the Confederate flag

There were as many as 10,000 witnesses to the Confederate flag’s furling on the front lawn of the S.C. State House. But the eyes of the entire nation, it seemed, were on Columbia that day.

The witnesses — Black and white, politicians and pastors, veterans and children — stood under the hot July sun in testament to one of the most significant moments in South Carolina’s modern history, spurred by one of its most devastating: The slayings of nine Black worshippers inside Charleston’s revered Emanuel AME Church, their lives taken by a man whose racist creed had boiled beneath the banner of the old South.

“Nine lives had to be given for the conscience of people to recognize that that flag represented hate, slavery, racism, division,” said Dorothy Stewart on that day, July 10, 2015. At the age of 82, the Columbia resident witnessed history. “Even though it is just a symbol, it is now something we don’t have to visually look at as a representation of all that, and we can come together — black and white, brown, whatever color. It is so marvelous. I’m just excited.”

For 54 years, the Confederate battle flag flew prominently at the S.C. State House, first atop its dome, later on its front lawn. In fewer than 60 seconds, it was lowered and folded.

A grand cheer erupted at a moment that was half a century in the making, since the day the flag first was raised above the capitol in 1961. It was raised to honor the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, but it flew against the powerful winds of the civil rights movement.

To see the flag lowered was not a proud moment for everyone, as many South Carolinians stood and continue to stand by it as a symbol of Southern heritage, for better and for worse.

On the fifth anniversary of its removal from the State House grounds, the Confederate flag remains a symbol of the state’s slow march toward progress, toward equity and unity.

This story was originally published July 9, 2020 at 1:11 PM.