Senate OKs removal of Confederate flag

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C.

The South Carolina Senate gave its final approval Tuesday to removing the Confederate flag from the Capitol grounds, but across the hall in the House, Republicans quietly sought a way to make a last stand to preserve some kind of symbol honoring their Southern ancestors at the Statehouse.

The House was scheduled to begin debate today on the bill to take down the flag and its pole and send the banner to the state’s Confederate Relic Room. Gov. Nikki Haley and business leaders support the proposal.

To stress the chamber’s unity after Tuesday’s 36-3 vote, senators invited the widow of their slain colleague Clementa Pinckney to the floor. She stood just inside the door in a black dress, only a few feet from her husband’s desk, which was draped in black cloth with a single white rose on top. Every member stood as she entered and later walked up to her, offering condolences.

After the flag was pulled off the Statehouse dome 15 years ago, it was called a settled issue. The banner was instead moved to a monument honoring Confederate soldiers elsewhere on the Capitol grounds.

But the flag debate swiftly gained urgency last month after Pinckney and eight other black people were fatally shot at a historic African-American church in Charleston. A white gunman who police said was motivated by racial hatred is charged in the attack.

Dylann Roof was indicted Tuesday on nine counts of murder, three counts of attempted murder and a weapons charge.

Haley and other conservatives have said they called for the flag to come down in part because of photos showing Roof posing with the Confederate symbol.

If the House goes along with the Senate’s bill, the flag could be removed by the end of the week. But if the House changes the bill, either the Senate would have to agree with the changes or lawmakers would have to reconcile their differences in a conference committee, possibly delaying action for weeks. Several senators said the lopsided vote shows they do not want their bill to change.

Many Republicans in the House insist the flag will come down because of its association with racist groups. But they think lawmakers should at least discuss replacing it with a different flag that flew over Confederate troops.

Rep. Mike Pitts plans to propose several possible flags for the pole and believes he has a majority to pass them. Completely removing the flagpole, he said, would scrub history, which includes family members from his Laurens County home and from the mountains of North Carolina and Virginia.

“I guess my plan for tomorrow is to be a lot like my ancestors were at the Bloody Angle,” Pitts said, referring to part of a Virginia battlefield where fighting raged for nearly 24 hours in 1864, leaving Confederate dead stacked four deep behind their fortifications. “And fight until I have nothing left to fight with.”

Pitts’ favorite amendment would place on the pole the flag of the 1st South Carolina Volunteers regiment, which is a blue flag similar to the state flag with its Palmetto tree and crescent moon but with a wreath around the tree. Similar art is etched on a wall inside the Statehouse, Pitts said.