And Gov. Nikki Haley has already said she would sign it into law.
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The rebel banner will go to the “relic room” of South Carolina’s military museum in Columbia, the state capital. He said he won’t attend Friday’s ceremony because of obligations in his district.
The state legislature, which lost state Sen. However, when Clementa C. Pinckney, a state senator and the minister of the church, lay in state in the capitol at the end of June, the flag still flew outside.
Haley said that in the weeks that followed, “that compassion motivated action”.
“Today, in South Carolina, division has been replaced with unity”.
Haley is expected to show up any moment.
“But be clear, the prospect of a bigger boycott, more economic sanctions, were effective”, he said. They agreed then to move it to a 30-foot pole next to a Confederate monument out front. The NCAA Executive Committee declared the moratorium following concerns raised by the National Association of Basketball Coaches, the Black Coaches Association, the Student Basketball Council and other organizations. Supporters argue that the flag represents the South heritage and pride, while opponents say the flag is a strong symbol of racial hatred.
“Where do we draw the line?”
He said he made the proposal after Republican leaders brought it to him at the request of some Southern Republicans.
The removal of the flag marks a startling volte-face in a state where the first shots of the USA Civil War were fired.
“The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse” on Friday, Haley, a Republican, said before signing the bill.
“The people of Charleston deserve immediate and swift removal of that flag from these grounds”. His administration is looking into it. Parts of its design were incorporated into the state flags of South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia – against the wishes of African-American civil rights groups who viewed it as a symbol of a brutally oppressive past.
“It’s just like the conclusion of the war itself”, Rep. Mike Pitts told The Associated Press on Thursday. “The issue was settled, and the nation came back together to move on”.
The controversy over Confederate imagery is already having ripple effects at the national level, where the US House was forced to table a spending bill over disagreement about the bill’s provisions for displaying the Confederate battle flag on federal cemetery grounds.
That all changed last month when a white gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, killed nine African-American worshipers in a historic Charleston church.
She said later that didn’t intend to speak, but got frustrated with her party members.
“That perpetrator wrapped himself in the Confederate flag“, said Malcolm Graham, brother of one of the victims.
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Democrats didn’t want any new flag going up because it “will be the new vestige of racism”, Rutherford said.
