The killing sparked a nationwide debate about the flag, and led many companies to stop manufacturing or selling items with its image.
Advertisement
South Carolina removed the Confederate battle flag from its Capitol grounds during a ceremony Friday morning. “It really hurt to see it come down”, said Snyder.
An honor guard from the South Carolina Highway Patrol has arrived on the grounds of the Statehouse and the officers are standing stoically as they wait to take down the Confederate flag. “No one should drive by the statehouse and feel pain, no one should ever drive by the statehouse and feel like they don’t belong”. “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. “We made history and the flag is down”, said Jamie Cabbagestalk of Marion, South Carolina. “I think it is a day that we can all say that we have come together as a state”, she said.
The flag is used to honor Confederate war dead and is embraced by many white Southerners who say it symbolizes Southern and ancestral pride.
The flag was placed on the capitol dome in 1961, ostensibly to mark the 100th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, though the re-emergence of the Confederate banner in the South decades after it fell into disuse coincided with the civil rights movement and federally mandated desegregation.
The emblem, which features a star-filled blue cross set against a red background, was lowered from outside the legislature on Friday after a renewed fight by civil rights campaigners.
Hundreds gathered on Friday to watch the Confederate flag be lowered from the flag pole outside the state Capitol.
According to the legislation Republican Gov. Nikki Haley signed Thursday, the flagpole also will be taken down, but no time frame has been announced for that. And in light of the tragic massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church and the nine South Carolinians who were victims of a frightful racist massacre, we’re keeping all of that in our minds.
Patsy Eaddy, a black woman, said there was a “sense of embarrassment” of seeing the flag still flying.
“Will people still wear the symbol on their T-shirts or fly it from their homes?”
The families of the nine victims killed in the church shooting had a front-row view for the removal of the flag. FBI Director James Comey outlined a series of missed opportunities and incomplete paperwork that allowed the transaction to take place.
Advertisement
Clary said that now South Carolina can focus on important issues such as roads, education, mental health and economic development.
