South Carolina House Votes To Remove Confederate Flag From State House

The South Carolina House of Representatives voted early Thursday morning to take down the confederate flag from statehouse grounds, crossing the last major hurdle for the banner’s removal.

The House passed the bill 94-20 after more than 13 hours of debate over where the flag should go once removed and what, if anything, should stand in its place.

The bill passed was a “clean” version of the one the senate had passed the day before and can now go straight to Gov. Nikki Haley, who has already spoken out in opposition of the flag.

The flag could be down as early as Thursday.

“Today, as the Senate did before them, the House of Representatives has served the State of South Carolina and her people with great dignity,” Haley said in a statement after the vote. “I’m grateful for their service‎ and their compassion. It is a new day in South Carolina, a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and one state.”

The South Carolina Senate approved the bill 37-3 on Tuesday, and House members sent it straight to the floor for a vote the next day.

But more than 60 amendments to the bill stood in its way on Wednesday and, eventually, into Thursday, all proposed by republican lawmakers to delay the process or keep a confederate relic on the grounds somehow.

They ranged from serious to theatrical to just plain absurd and assured that debate would rage on long into the night.

Included was one to fly the flag only on confederate memorial day, another that would replace the flag with the state’s volunteer infantry flag from the time of the civil war. One exasperated republican introduced one that would replace the confederate flag with a white flag, what he called the “unofficial flag of the Republican party.”

But by far the longest and most hindering was proposed by Sen. Rick Quinn that would create a display for the confederate flag at the state’s confederate relic room after it was taken down.

The amendment wasn’t much different from the original bill—only specifying what exactly would happen with the flag once it was removed—but its passage would have forced the senate to reconvene, delaying the flag’s removal by weeks, some predicted.

During the nearly three-hour debate on Quinn’s amendment, Jenny Horne, a representative from Charleston delivered a tearful speech, invoking the memory of the nine slain almost exactly three weeks ago from the time of the debate.

“The people of Charleston deserve swift and immediate removal of that flag from these grounds,” Horne said. “I cannot believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful.”

The amendment was eventually voted down, and after a brief recess, the House reconvened at 1 a.m. Thursday morning and voted to pass the amendment clean, as lawmakers held up their phones to the video voting board to document the historic moment.

Debate over the flag rose in the weeks after Dylann Roof allegedly opened fire on a traditionally black Charleston church, killing nine, on June 17.

Roof was associated with hate groups and had posted pictures of himself with white supremacist symbols, including the confederate flag.

Image by eyeliam via Flickr Creative Commons