South Carolina lawmakers to debate fate of Confederate flag

The South Carolina House of Representatives agreed Tuesday to debate the fate of the Confederate battle flag that flies amid controversy on the State Capitol grounds.

The decision came as a growing chorus of state politicians — including the son of the late segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond — backed the effort to remove the symbol of the Confederacy and hundreds of protesters assembled around it to add their voices.

Also Tuesday, The Citadel's governing board voted to remove and relocate the Confederate Navy Jack from the Summerall Chapel of the state's historic military college, pending permission from the General Assembly, a spokesperson told WCSC-TV. The new location for the flag, flown by the Confederate States Navy, has not been decided.

In early June, Henry Darby, a black Charleston County councilman, proposed cutting $975,000 in funding to The Citadel if the college did not remove the flag, which he called "a very divisive symbol that's being supported by tax dollars."

On June 10, a week before the church massacre, the state's attorney general issued an opinion that the flag, which has hung in the chapel since 1939, is protected by the state's Heritage Act and "may not be removed or relocated."

Retired Lt Gen. Michael Steele, the head of the college's governing board, said afterward that the school hoped that the decision "will bring closure for those who have raised this issue."

In sweltering temperatures earlier in the day, attendees chanted "take it down" and "bring it down." A small number of Confederate flag supporters also were present.

The event was announced Monday in a Facebook post, Rally To Remove Confederate Flag from SC State House. Organizers handed out water to those attending in the heat.

"Talk has been had, we don't need any more talking," said Nelson Rivers, a speaker from the National Action Network. "All the points have been made. The governor has spoken. The flag ought to come down."

"It's time for South Carolina to get past its history," J. Elliott Summey, president of the Charleston County Council, told NBC News. "History belongs in a place. It belongs in a museum, not on sovereign ground."

The debate will be scheduled for later this summer. Removal of the flag requires a two-thirds supermajority vote in both legislative chambers. State Republican Party Chairman Matt Moore said he believes both parties are committed to bringing it down.

"With enough political will anything can be done," Moore said. "There is a silent majority of South Carolinians who strongly believe we can have a better future without the flag being on statehouse grounds."

State Senator Tom Davis, R-Beaufort, told Tuesday's crowd that there are many good, decent people in the legislature and across the state who revere the flag and are not racist, and that it's important to convince them that now is the time to act.

"I think it's important as I go forward and try to make the case that we let them have their say, that we listen, and we then try to say, 'Yes, that's all true and we respect that, but you also have to understand that for many people, (the flag) does not stand for that,'" Davis said.

The broader push to remove the stars and bars from the state Capitol gained a prominent Republican voice Tuesday — the son of Thurmond, who, it was revealed after his 2003 death, had fathered a biracial child.

"Now we have these hate groups and the symbols they use to remind African Americans that things haven't changed and that they are still viewed as less than equal human beings," State Sen. Paul Thurmond said in a floor speech. "Well, let me tell you things have changed. Overwhelmingly, people are not being raised to hate or to believe they are superior to others based on the color of their skin."

South Carolina's second-highest ranking elected official, Republican Lt. Gov. Henry McMaster, also urged lowering the flag forever. On his official Facebook page Tuesday he said that "the time has come to consider an appropriate location for the Confederate flag."

McMaster's comments came a day after his fellow Republican, Gov. Nikki Haley, called on legislators to vote to remove the flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia.

Haley's announcement was made a few days after authorities charged Dylann Roof, 21, with murdering nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Roof, who is white, appeared in photos holding Confederate flags and burning or desecrating U.S. flags. Police captured him in Shelby, N.C.

McMaster chaired the state's Republican Party in 2000 when a compromise was reached to move the flag from atop the Capitol dome to a Confederate monument. During his failed 2010 gubernatorial bid, the former U.S. attorney and state attorney general said he considered the issue resolved.

South Carolina legislators returned to Columbia on Tuesday for a special session to pass the state budget. However, senior officials, including Charleston Mayor Joseph P. Riley and State Sen. Marlon Kimpson, who represents an area in and around Charleston, have called on the legislators to stay in session and vote on removing the flag.

"We're counting on you to send a loud, resounding message," Kimpson told the rally. "And we're counting on people of good will of all races, of all creeds, of all religions to bring unity that we can say unequivocally and without fear of contradiction tha it is a great day in South Carolina."

The push to take down the flag is the latest chapter in a heated debate that has roiled the Palmetto State for more than 50 years, and several political obstacles make any quick resolution of the argument unlikely.

The National Action Network's Rev. Rivers earlier called for the flag to be taken down before State Sen. Clementa Pinckney, who also was chief pastor of the Emanuel AME Church, lies in state at the South Carolina Capitol on Wednesday.

State Rep.Todd Rutherford, a Democrat, said that the bill would have to clear the judiciary committee and then come back to the floor for debate.

"If I had to set a deadline, I'd say about Aug. 1, hopefully before September, but the House is going to work as soon as possible to get it done," he told WLTX-TV.

Sen. Larry Martin, a Republican who heads the state Senate Judiciary Committee, said he favors waiting until at least next week to take on the matter. Sen. Mike Fair, also a Republican, favors holding off until January for a debate, saying the push for a vote now is "almost being opportunistic."

Gov. Haley said that if lawmakers don't take up the flag debate this summer, she will call them back for a special session.

"There will be a time for discussion and debate. The time for action is coming soon," Haley said Monday.

Haley has for years deflected questions about the flag. But she said Monday she was moved by the outpouring of love and forgiveness that followed the "true hate" of the crime. She noted her entire family attended Emanuel AME on Sunday, when the church reopened its doors.

"My children saw what true faith looks like. My children saw that true hate can never, never triumph over true love. My children saw the heart and soul of South Carolina start to mend," she said.

She stressed that, for many South Carolinians, the flag still represents noble traditions of heritage and duty, but for many others, it is a "deeply offensive symbol of a brutally oppressive past."

Haley, an Indian-American, is not the first South Carolina governor to call for the flag's removal from government buildings. In 1996, then-Gov.David Beasley pushed to have it removed from the Capitol dome, only to back off and then be driven from office two years later in the political blowback.

The Confederate battle flag first flew atop the statehouse in 1962, as part of the Civil War centennial commemoration, where it remained, despite persistent protest from civil rights groups, until 2000. That year a political compromise led to the flag being removed from the Capitol Dome and another raised on a 30-foot flagpole at the Confederate Soldier Monument in front of the Capitol.

Many South Carolinians, such as Leland Summers, the head of the state's chapter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, say the flag is about history and heritage, not hate.

"Do not associate the cowardly actions of a racist to our Confederate Banner," Summers said in a statement. "There is absolutely no link between The Charleston Massacre and The Confederate Memorial Banner. Don't try to create one."

Rivers, however, called it a symbol of "hate and division. The flag is the symbol of the worst of South Carolina's past."

The controversy over the Confederate flag in South Carolina has sparked calls for similar symbols in other states to be removed. In Mississippi on Monday, House Speaker Philip Gunn called for the Confederate emblem to be removed from the state flag, becoming the first top-tier Republican in the state to do so.

Meanwhile in Tennessee, both Democrats and Republicans urged the removal of a bust of Confederate general and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest from an alcove outside the Senate's chambers.

Additionally, Walmart announced Monday that it is removing any items from its store shelves and website that feature the Confederate flag and Amazon followed suit Tuesday. NASCAR also issued a statement Tuesday saying it "supports the position that South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley took on the Confederate Flag."

And on Tuesday, Virginia's Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, moved to have the Confederate flag banished from state license plates.

Matthew Diebel and William Cummings reported from New York City and McLean, Va. Contributing: Yamiche Alcindor and Michael Winter, USA TODAY; Tony Santaella, WLTX-TV, Columbia, S.C.; and The Associated Press