South Carolina Senate votes to remove Confederate flag

The South Carolina Senate has voted to take down the Confederate flag in the Capitol grounds, which symbolizes the racist motivation behind a deadly church shooting in Charleston.

The state Senate voted 37-3 on Monday, with one more vote needed in the House on Tuesday, to remove the flag after it was first flown above the Statehouse to protest integration more than five decades ago.

The flag and flagpole could be removed should the House pass the same measure and Gov. Nikki Haley sign the papers, the Associated Press reported.

Proponents of the flag removal believe it is a symbol of slavery and racism, while supporters say it represents the history and heritage of the southeastern state.

The debate began after nine people were shot dead at an African-American church in the city of Charleston on June 17. The white man charged in the shooting was photographed with the Confederate flag.

Several senators said the fact that the families of the victims are willing to forgive the gunman changed their minds about the flag.

"We now have the opportunity, the obligation, to put the exclamation point on an extraordinary narrative of good and evil, of love and mercy that will take its place in the history books," said Sen. Tom Davis, a Republican.

Also, Republican Sen. Larry Martin, who has hampered attempts to remove the flag for decades, said the church shooting made him conclude that his black colleague arrived at long ago — that the rebel flag "has more to do with what was going on in the 1960s as opposed to the 1860s."

Martin, who is white, had family who arrived in South Carolina's then-rugged northern backcountry from Scotland in the early 1800s, the time when the enslaved relatives of Sen. Darrell Jackson, a black Democrat, involuntarily ended up near Columbia.

Jackson helped write the compromise that pulled the Confederate flag down off the Statehouse dome in 2000 and placed it in its current location on a pole on the Capitol's front lawn.

On Monday, he said his great-grandfather's brother pulled out of a plantation and joined the Union army when William Sherman, who served as a General in the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861–65), came storming through Columbia.

Jackson said he wished he had not stopped getting rid of the flag completely 15 years ago, but noted he would welcome the opportunity now to honor his great-grandfather, Ishmael Jackson, who chose to escape for freedom.

AT/AGB

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