The crowd: Voices from the 10,000 who watched the flag come down (+ video)

A salute to youth

Shauna Gillie of Irmo brought her five children – Keon, 2; Keola, 5; Keasia, 7; KeShawn, 8; and Sydia, 13 – to the ceremony.

After the flag was lowered, she propped them up on a concrete landing outside the west entrance to the State House where the governor’s office is located. Gillie was hoping Gov. Nikki Haley would come out so the children could thank her for calling for the removal of the flag.

“A minority Republican woman did it,” Gillie said. “I don’t always agree with the way she runs the government, but she made a difference in their lives. This is just a stepping stone.”

Haley did not come out, but for a brief moment, she looked out of a glass pane of the door and waved at Gillie’s children.

“That was amazing,” Gillie said.

Once more with meaning

Russ Webb of Columbia was at the King Day at the Dome rally in 2000 in Columbia that ignited the campaign to remove the Confederate flag from the State House dome.

That rally marked the largest demonstration in South Carolina history.

On Friday, he wore a T-shirt from that earlier rally as he watched with his daughters, Alexandra, 13, and Blyth, 7, as the flag came down from the lawn.

The T-shirt had belonged to his father, Wayne, who died in 2001 at age 50.

Webb’s mother had given it to him just before Friday’s ceremony.

‘I wanted to say thank you’

Rachel Pickett of Columbia arrived at the State House at 7:30 a.m. Friday and taped a poster with the words “Thank You!” over the barricade directly in front of the Confederate flag – prime real estate ahead of the day’s flag furling.

“I wanted to say thank you to the House, Senate and governor,” Pickett said. “I think it took everyone putting the pieces together to make it work.”

She said she had been following the political debate closely and had stayed up late on Wednesday to watch the House decide on the flag’s fate. “I really do believe people’s attitudes are changing,” she added.

In defense of heritage

Ray Miller of Charleston wants everyone to know he believes the shooting deaths that occurred at Emmanuel AME Church in his hometown of Charleston three weeks ago “was a despicable thing to do.”

But he also wants people to know that he is proud of his Confederate heritage, particularly his great-great-grandfather J.R.D. Wolfe, who served in the 2nd South Carolina Artillery in the Civil War.

On Friday, he was one of about 50 re-enactors who showed up for the ceremony to bring down the Confederate flag.

While permitted to sit around the soldier’s monument, the re-enactors were asked to move to the south side of the State House to the Wade Hampton statue. Miller doubts that the Legislature will allocate money to properly honor the flag and the soldiers it represents at the nearby Confederate Relic Room.

“I would not bet on it,” he said.

A special guest

Charleston Mayor Joe Riley arrived a the State House at about 9:30 a.m. Friday and entered through the west door near the governor’s office.

In 2000, he led a march from Charleston to Columbia to draw support for bring the Confederate flag off the capitol dome, and for years had been an advocate for removing the flag entirely.

When asked how he felt to see the flag come down after all these years he said simply: “I feel wonderful.”

Cooling off the crowd

Spectators were loving sisters Ann Young and Joyce Wright early Friday. The women were handing out much-needed fans to the crowd as the heat started to creep toward 90 degrees.

Each fan had a logo for Mitchelville, the first town in America to be governed by freed slaves after the Civil War. Wright, of Hilton Head Island, is the program director for the Mitchelville Preservation Project, an organization that works to preserve the history of the site, located on Hilton Head. She said she was excited to be on the State House grounds – another historical site.

“It’s living history we can be a part of,” she said.

A satisfying end

Breyon Williams of Columbia stood under a wide blue umbrella off to the side of the flagpole on Friday while waiting, along with thousands of others, for the flag to come down.

The 25-year-old doctoral economics student at the University of South Carolina said he was there to show his respect for the nine people who were shot and killed at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston.

“I’m thinking about those nine people today,” he said. When the flag came down to cheers and chants of “USA, USA,” he smiled and said, “I’m satisfied with that.”

A new understanding

Jerry Pate, 72, said his generation and white generations before him in South Carolina “were taught bad history” full of misinformation and omissions that was passed on by parents and grandparents.

“There was the myth of the Lost Cause, that it was a noble Lost Cause, and the Civil War was never about slavery, (but that) it was about unfair taxes and federal intrusion,” Pate said.

Pate, who grew up in Cheraw participating in Confederate Memorial Day celebrations, said his eyes were opened to what whites were doing to blacks through segregation laws when he began to cover civil rights demonstrations in the 1960s for a local TV station.

Pate said the fact that South Carolina lawmakers were able to take the flag down “reflects the dying off of my generation.”

Politicians speak

▪  Rep. Joe Neal, D-Richland: “I was here when it went up. The majority of the Black Caucus did not want that flag in front of the State House. We were here in 2000 in protest. Today, to see it finally come down is an affirmation – it never should have been here. I’m so glad to see South Carolina has come to the point where they have done what needed to be done.”

▪  Rep. Gerry Govan, D-Orangeburg: “I’m just so happy. We have allowed our children and grandchildren the right to move on. From this day forward, we have a great opportunity to build a great South Carolina, not one built on the past, but one built on the opportunity for a brighter future for all of us.”

▪  Sen. Gerald Malloy, D-Darlington, said it was unfortunate that it took the Charleston shooting to make people understand the divisiveness of the flag: “Candidly, I feel like we got a raw deal.” Innocent blood was shed as a sacrifice to satisfy something political “that we could have and should have done beforehand.”

Staff writers John Monk, Erin Shaw, Jeff Wilkinson and Cassie Cope contributed.