South Carolina lawmakers begin debate over Confederate flag

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina lawmakers on Monday began debating whether to bring the Confederate flag down outside the Capitol, starting with a pair of senators whose families arrived in the state before the Civil War.

Both men — one white, one black — have come to the same conclusion that the rebel flag no longer represents the valor of Southern soldiers but the racism that led them to separate from the United States more than 150 years ago.

The Confederate flag “has more to do with what was going on in the 1960s as opposed to the 1860s,” said Republican Sen. Larry Martin, who is white and has fought off attempts to move the flag for decades.

Martin, whose family came to South Carolina’s northern backcountry in the early 1800s, said he changed his mind after nine people were shot to death during Bible study at a historic African-American church in Charleston by a man police say was motivated by racial hatred.

Then there was Sen. Darrell Jackson, a black Democrat who helped write the compromise that brought the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome in 2000 and put it in its current location on a pole on the capitol’s front lawn. His family was also in South Carolina during the Civil War. His great-grandfather’s brother left a plantation when Gen. William Sherman came storming through Columbia and joined the Union army.

Jackson said he regretted not going farther to get rid of the flag completely 15 years ago. But he welcomed the chance now to honor his ancestor and freed slave Ishmael Jackson.

“You said we lost the war. No we didn’t. Not Ishmael Jackson and the 57 percent of people who looked like him. As far as they are concerned, they won the war,” Jackson said.

The Senate expected to continue the debate Monday afternoon.