People turn out at SC State House to mark Confederate flag’s final day there (+ video)

Shirley Brown of Columbia was amused by all the people who were taking selfies on the last full day the Confederate flag would fly on the State House grounds.

She brought her three grandchildren to the lawn, and took some pictures herself with Briana, 15, Alana, 8, and Marley, 5.

“They need to see this,” said Brown, who works for the S.C. Department of Juvenile Justice. “This is a moment they should never forget.”

She and the children were a bit put off by all the chanting, loud discussions and honking of car horns on Gervais Street. They stayed back a bit.

“It’s a little crazy, but it’s fine,” Browm said. “Everybody is trying to get a point across and they’re standing in the sun so it gets a little crazy. But that’s alright.”

As for the pro-flag demonstrators, she said, “I understand what they mean, but this is a place of all the people.”

Is she coming to the lowering ceremony Friday?

“Oh yes,” she said, pointing to her grandchildren. “I’ll be here in the morning with them.”

‘I came to stand up for my sister’

A well-dressed man sat down on a bench behind the Spanish-American War memorial on the State House grounds. He spoke softly on a cell phone and watched a boisterous crowd swell on Gervais Street.

He extended a hand.

“I’m Malcolm Graham,” he said. “The brother of Cynthia Graham Hurd.”

Hurd was one of the nine victims of the June 17 killings at Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church. He drove from his home in Charlotte Thursday morning to be at the signing ceremony that would remove the Confederate flag from the State House lawn.

“I came to stand up for my sister,” he said. “But for their sacrifices this would not be coming down. I don’t want her to become a victim. I want to stand for her. I want to speak for her.”

Graham is a six-year Charlotte City Council member and a 10-year state senator who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. He’s going to run for Congress again.

“I understand this moment,” he said, “and I want to urge lawmakers to make this the start of a movement.”

He spoke of the need to remove impediments to voting, thinly veiled laws that hinder African-American advancement.

Asked whether Confederate monuments and statues should come down he shrugged.

“History is important and the Confederacy happened,” the Charleston native said. “Every community is going to have to identify its own moral compass.”

Graham did not plan to attend Friday’s lowering of the flag.

“I never paid attention to it flying,” he said. “I don’t need to see it come down.”

‘One state! One flag!’

Don Bramblett of Spartanburg went to bed Wednesday night before the S.C. House voted to bring down the Confederate flag.

But he knew it was coming down.

So early Thursday morning, he rolled up his flag on a flag pole, got in his car and drove to Columbia. He wanted to be on the State House grounds on the last day the Confederate battle flew on the lawn.

But it wasn’t the Confederate flag Bramblett took to the capitol. It was the South Carolina state flag.

He spent the morning walking around the grounds, wearing a blue shirt, shorts and a pith helmet and waving the flag.

“I wanted to celebrate what’s going to happen,” the self-employed electrician said. “It’s a sign of oppression, and it’s been up there all my life.

“You can’t have two flags and have unity,” he said. “You can’t have one group following one flag and another group following another.”

Then his eyes lit up, and as he strode off, waving the flag, he began to chant.

“One state! One flag! One state! One flag!

‘I respect everyone’s opinion’

John McCaskill, too, went to bed Wednesday before the House vote was taken.

When he heard the news the next morning, he rolled his Confederate flag around its pole and drove to the State House. There he sat quietly near the capitol steps.

McCaskill, 49, of Columbia, bought his flag 30 years ago. Its pole was a sapling McCaskell found in the woods two decades ago, a sapling that had a swirling scar along its length from a vine.

He would fly the flag at his home periodically or take it to flag events. He even marched with it in the Hunley funeral in 2004.

Now, the flag was faded and stained.

“I don’t fly it in the weather anymore,” he said. “It’s too old.”

As he sat on the steps Thursday, dozens of photographers, videographers and tourists buzzed around him, sometimes five or six at a time.

He didn’t acknowledge them. He didn’t speak. He just sat, quietly.

“I didn’t come here for publicity,” he said. “I just want to show support. I think this thing has been blown way out of proportion. But I respect everyone’s opinion. You just have to deal with it.”

A symbol of Southern pride?

Richard and Donna Canalizo flew to Columbia from their New Orleans home Tuesday with their three children.

Their oldest daughter, Anna, will attend the University of South Carolina in the fall and she was attending orientation.

They spent Wednesday night at the Hilton in the Vista, and decided to bring Anna, 18, Ella, 13, and Oliva, 11, to the State House to see history.

Being from New Orleans, they are no strangers to the Confederate flag. Anna had even studied the flag’s history and had debated about it in a competition in North Carolina.

“Northerners don’t understand how Southerners feel about that flag,” she said. “Southerners see it as a symbol of Southern pride. And superficially, it is about Southern pride.

“But I studied it,” she added. “And when you dig down into the history, it’s all about a divided nation and racial tension.”

The family had not heard Thursday morning that the New Orleans mayor had ordered four Confederate statues removed, including one of Robert E. Lee in Lee Circle.

“It’s kind of sentimental, because its been a part of the city all my life,” Donna Canalizo said. “But they should take them down.”

“Not Robert E. Lee!” Anna said. “He was a brilliant tactician.”

“No he wasn’t,” Donna said. “They lost.”

‘It’s time for it to come down’

Traeger Mechling woke up Thursday and had an epiphany.

The owners of Graph-itti, a Columbia T-shirt company, decided to print 250 shirts – with the words “Bring It Down,” along with a Confederate flag motif – and give them away.

“I’m tired of the bickering,” he said, as swarms of television crews surrounded him. “It’s time for it to come down.”

The T-shirts, with product and labor, cost Mechling about $500. And the mixed design of the Confederate colors and the call to bring the flag down served as a bit of a metaphor.

“I’ve been around that flag all my life and I always thought it should be there,” he said. “I saw it every day. I didn’t see it as a hate thing. But I changed my mind.”

Why?

“I had children,” he said. “I thought, how am I going to explain it to them?”

“ I see the hate,” Mechling added. “I see it in people’s hearts. I see it in their faces. It’s time for it to come down.”

This story was originally published July 9, 2015 at 5:26 PM with the headline "People turn out at SC State House to mark Confederate flag’s final day there (+ video)."