Howell said that very confederate flag launched an economic boycott of the Palmetto State by the NAACP. “This is a situation where it has expired”.
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One of the victims of the massacre was state Senator Clementa Pinckney, a senior pastor of the church. “I didn’t support it, I didn’t think it would be forever, now it’s gone”.
The Confederate flag was once a familiar symbol in country music, representing the rural South and the renegade spirit of artists such as David Allan Coe and Hank Williams Jr. Some people are carrying Confederate flags, but more are carrying signs saying the flag should come down.
“It was just incredible to be able to witness history because that’s something that’s going to last a lifetime”, Pederson said.
Supporters of the flag were disappointed, but resigned. “What a proud moment it is, not for the state of South Carolina only, but for this republic – the United States of America – when a symbol of hatred and of division and exclusion was brought down”, said Roslyn Brock, NAACP Board of Directors.
By posing with the Confederate flag before the shootings, suspect Dylann Storm Roof, who has not yet entered a plea to nine counts of murder, convinced some that the flag’s reputation for white supremacy and racial oppression had trumped its symbolism of southern heritage and ancestral pride.
The influence of the Charleston tragedy was evident during the Confederate flag ceremony Friday.
The rebel flag, raised on state grounds more than 50 years ago at the height of the USA civil rights movement, was taken down just after 10 a.m. ET.
Haley – surrounded by politicians, former governors and relatives of the victims of the June 17 massacre at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church – said the measure concerned the “future of our children”. While she didn’t speak, she nodded and smiled in the direction of the crowd after someone shouted: “Thank you governor”. That same day, a Republican congressman from California had proposed an amendment to another bill that would allow the flag to continue to fly at some federal cemeteries. They handed it a third trooper.
On Friday, Highway Patrol Cpls.
“We have six months to come up with a budget and a plan to exhibit the flag”, he said.
During an emotional ceremony and amid popular cheers, the Confederate battle flag was brought down from a 30-foot flagpole that sits on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. “Sure they will. But as far as this flag symbolizing a state or local government, that day is over”.
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The seven-minute ceremony that drew thousands of onlookers who filled sidewalks and lawns on the north side of the State House and spilled into Gervais Street. Opponents have long campaigned for its removal and, in a 2000 compromise, it was moved from the actual building’s dome to the flagpole on the Capitol grounds, which is where it continued to fly when the nine churchgoers were gunned down – noticeably the only flag that was not lowered to half staff.
