Long road to remove SC’s State House Confederate flag was gut-wrenching, not easy

It was just a piece of cloth: red, white and blue, weighing a pound or two.

But five years ago Friday, after a half-century of controversy, the Confederate flag — a symbol of a sanitized Southern heritage somehow detached from slavery to some, and of white supremacy, racist murders and the Ku Klux Klan to others — came down from its place of honor on the S.C. State House grounds.

Thousands watched, then many cheered: “USA! USA!” The moment was caught by reporters from newspapers and television stations around the nation and world.

It had taken the execution-like killings of nine African Americans parishioners on June 17, 2015, by a white supremacist, Dylann Roof of Columbia, to spur the state’s mostly white political leadership to finally agree to lower the flag.

Before driving that hot June day from Columbia to Charleston to carry out his massacre at a prayer meeting at Mother Emanuel AME Church, the killer made sure everyone would know his motives. On the internet, Roof published photos of himself holding a Confederate flag — the same flag that flew at the State House — and made public a manifesto in which he urged a race war to keep Blacks down.

For many whites, seeing photos of Roof and the Confederate flag was a moment akin to the viral video of the recent police killing of George Floyd, where for more than eight minutes, he kept gasping, “I can’t breathe.” Then he died. After watching the Floyd video, millions of whites around the nation had an awakening, standing up publicly in protests in the streets, finally taking seriously longstanding Black complaints about police brutality against African Americans.

Making the Mother Emanuel killings especially shocking to many S.C. lawmakers was the fact that among the dead was one of the state’s most popular legislators, the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, 42, pastor of Mother Emanuel and a Democratic state senator from Jasper County. Pinckney - whom one senator called “the best of us” - was beloved at the State House for his good humor, caring nature and intelligence.

Pinckney’s violent death — he was the first one Roof shot — and the other killings launched a movement by lawmakers that would bring Confederate flag down.

Before the massacre, South Carolinians were stuck in a years-long, partisan stalemate over whether to remove the flag.

Only a year before the flag’s removal, then-Gov. Nikki Haley, a Republican, had chided her Democratic rival, Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, when he challenged her to take a position on bringing the flag down.

“Not a single CEO” is complaining about having the Confederate flag flying, Haley told Sheheen in a televised debate. The state now has a fine image, Haley said. Moreover, she suggested, South Carolina has moved beyond prejudice because after all, she is Indian-American, and she was elected.

Sheheen lost the election in November 2014.

As 2015 began, bringing down the flag seemed hardly possible. Many Republicans, who depended and still depend in large part on conservative whites, some of whom were against taking the flag down, were opposed to removing it.

But in June, the Mother Emanuel killings shocked Haley enough that she began calling current and former prominent state officials and asking them if they would back her if she called for taking the flag off State House grounds. Haley also felt pressure from business and political leaders, both state and national, who urged her to take action on the flag, according to news accounts at the time.

More than a dozen prominent Republicans and Democrats agreed to join Haley in calling for the flag to come down. They included the state’s two Republican U.S. senators, Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott, who is the only black Republican in the U.S. Senate. Haley urged the Legislature to return to take down the flag.

Another dynamic in play following the massacre was the reaction to the murders by people in Charleston, especially members of the Mother Emanuel AME church and relatives of the slain African Americans. Not only were there no sprees of violence, church members and a number of the relatives made headlines around the world by saying they forgave Roof.

Then, a week after the killings, in a memorial speech in Charleston, then-President Obama called attention to the families’ forgiveness, saying that Roof “blinded by hatred... failed to comprehend what Rev. Pinckney so well understood - the power of God’s grace.” Obama then sang “Amazing Grace.”

Bob Coble, longtime Columbia mayor and native white South Carolinian, said, “There’s no question that the grace that was shown by the families of the Emanuel 9 touched the hearts of every South Carolinian. Common sense just tells you that when people act like that, showing forgiveness in horrific conditions, there’s no question their grace and the way they handled it played an enormous role in the flag coming down.”

More than a week later, another dramatic moment occurred as the state Senate began to debate removing the flag.

State Sen. Paul Thurmond, R-Charleston, took the floor. He was the youngest son of longtime segregationist the late U. S. Sen. Strom Thurmond, R-S.C., one of the state’s most popular politicians ever. Although the older Thurmond over the years had moderated his positions on race, he had never said publicly he wanted the flag down.

“Colleagues, lend me your ears, your mind and your heart,” Thurmond, 38, began as he recalled the model public servant, lawmaker and family man that his friend Pinckney had been.

The time has come, Thurmond told the senators, for the state to remove the Confederate battle flag from its place in front of the State House “and put it in a museum.”

The time has come for South Carolina to unite around symbols of “peace, hope and unity. That future cannot be built on war, hate and divisiveness,” said Thurmond, whose ancestors fought for the South in the Civil War. “Our ancestors were literally fighting to keep human beings as slaves.”

To have the son of the state’s most iconic segregationist decry slavery, in a state where few white politicians ever mention slavery and many whites continue to deny slavery was a cause of the Civil War, was especially powerful. Thurmond’s speech was widely reported around the state and nation.

An era fighting

Days later, after first the Senate and then the House voted by two-thirds majorities, the flag came down. Some wept with joy — like former State House member Bakari Sellers, an African American and CNN commentator. In 2000, as a teen, he had marched with longtime Charleston Mayor Joe Riley to remove the flag from the dome.

Others lamented the loss.

Former Sen. Lee Bright, R-Spartanburg, was one of three state senators who voted to keep the flag flying. In an interview this week, Bright said he doesn’t regret his vote. His vote was in part a protest against people who want to erase history, he said. “Where do you stop?” he asked, noting that these days people are calling to take down statues of George Washington.

The day they took the flag down — July 10, 2015 — had been a long time coming. The flag had first been put up on the state Capitol dome in the early 1960s, in part as a protest against U.S. Supreme Court civil rights rulings that were undermining South Carolina’s entrenched segregation practices. The flag’s hoisting was originally sold as a commemoration of the centennial celebration of the 1861 beginning of the Civil War.

South Carolina African Americans had long been lonely voices objecting to the flag.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Columbia area Blacks like Kay Patterson, who would later become a state senator, and Lonnie Randolph, later executive director of the S.C. NAACP, began to speak out. In the early 1990s, the NAACP began to push for a nationwide boycott of the state.

Little by little, their protests picked up white supporters. The State’s editorial page began a crusade that would result in hundreds of “take the flag down” editorials for the next 20 years.

In 1994, then Columbia Mayor Bob Coble, who is white, and white business executives, worried how the presence of a slave state banner at the State House was affecting the state’s image, filed a lawsuit asking the State Supreme Court to appoint a mediator to find a solution. The case was dismissed.

Momentum for a boycott grew. In 1998, then-Gov. David Beasley, a Republican, lost his bid for reelection for suggesting he wanted to take the Confederate flag down from the State House dome and put it elsewhere on State House grounds.

Beasley’s loss demonstrated the power of a relatively small but politically powerful group of whites, many of whom were members of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, who asserted the flag only stood for the bravery of the soldiers who fought for South Carolina in the Civil War.

The devotion of these whites to honoring the Confederate soldier can hardly be overstated. The late State Sen. Verne Smith, R-Greenville, wept in a speech in the Senate one day as he recalled how one ancestor soldier had to walk home from Appomattox after Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered. Senate leader Sen. Glenn McConnell, R-Charleston, who had never been a soldier, liked to dress up in the uniform of a Confederate general. They did not normally speak of Black hardships — Jim Crow, lynchings, slavery and centuries of being deprived of basic rights.

By 2000, calls for a boycott grew to an extent where white political leaders such as McConnell knew a compromise was called for.

This was the compromise: the flag would come off the dome, be removed from the House and Senate chambers and an African American memorial would be erected on State House grounds. Also, the flag would fly on a flagpole in the front of the State House and only a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate each could remove it.

That was how, for the next 15 years, the flag stood in one of the most visible places in South Carolina — just steps from the intersection of Columbia’s Main and Gervais streets.

No one thought it would come down.

In 2014, after Republican Gov. Nikki Haley, then running for re-election, was challenged by Democratic rival Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, to commit to taking the flag down, Haley defended the flag’s presence.

Brad Warthen, the State’s former editorial page editor, who said in an interview he wrote more than 200 editorials over the years pushing for the flag’s removal, said the amazing thing about the flag being removed in 2015 was that state leaders finally came together and agreed to do it.

“That was always what it was about — South Carolina being the kind of place that would not fly the flag anymore. We had been trying for 20 years to do that,” Warthen said. Having large lawmaker majorities in both houses gave the flag lowering a legitimacy that nothing else could, he said. “It was something I did not think could ever happen.”

It took a ‘horrendous tragedy’

Sen. Darrell Jackson, D-Richland, an African American who became a senator in 1993, said in some ways the removal of the flag from the State House dome in 2000 was more important than its removal from State House grounds in 2015.

“In 2000, that was the first step,” said Jackson, recalling how when he came to the State Senate in 1993, he had to look at the Confederate flag plastered high up on a Senate wall for all to see. In his first year in office, he began introducing bills to remove the Confederate flags from the State House grounds.

“It was horrible every day, to look at that flag that represented the enslavement of my family,” said Jackson.

While the removal of the flag in 2015 was a substantial accomplishment, Jackson said, “ I felt a sense of hypocrisy. Gov. Haley had said earlier that the flag wasn’t that important to her.”

“It took a horrible horrendous tragedy. I didn’t feel like giving high fives to people who didn’t want to do that in the first place,” Jackson said. “My question to them is why did nine people have to die brutally for them to realize that?”

Former state Sen. Joel Lourie, D-Richland, was a longtime flag opponent who voted in 2015 to remove the flag and remains good friends with Jackson.

“I never thought we would take it down in 2015,” Lourie said in an interview.

While Lourie understands why some may criticize Haley for not responding sooner, she did one important thing — many Republicans who otherwise likely wouldn’t have voted to remove the flag followed her lead.

“People may question her motive — once she came out in favor of removing the flag, she gave cover to a lot of rank and file Republicans,” Lourie said.

These days, the flag hangs on a wall at the state’s Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum.

It is framed and has an alarm and security camera hooked up to it. It attracts no controversy.

“We have some battle flags that have blood stains and bullet holes in them,” said museum executive director Allen Roberson. “This one doesn’t. It was a political flag.”

Breaking Point: Tackling systemic racism in South Carolina

What is it? A forum hosted by The State on racial justice in South Carolina. Panelists include U.S. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, University of South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley, Richland Sheriff Leon Lott and more.

When: 12:30 p.m. Friday, July 10

Where: For free tickets, go online at thestate.com

This story was originally published July 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.