S.C. lawmakers return for Confederate flag debate

Published 8:04 am Monday, July 6, 2015

COLUMBIA, S.C. — While it appears there is broad support in the South Carolina Legislature to bring down the Confederate flag, the depth of that support will get its first test this week as lawmakers return to Columbia to come up with a specific plan.

The General Assembly returns Monday to discuss Gov. Nikki Haley’s budget vetoes and what to do with the rebel flag that has flown over some part of the Statehouse for more than 50 years.

Several bills have been filed, but details like when to bring down the flag that currently flies on a pole by a monument to Confederate soldiers in front of the state Capitol, whether to put another flag in its place and what kind of ceremony should mark the removal aren’t specified.

Email newsletter signup

And if South Carolina takes any lesson from the 2000 debate that brought the Confederate flag off the Statehouse dome and to its current location, it is that minor details can trip things up.

Haley, business leaders, the Legislative Black Caucus and civil rights leaders are against flying any flag that flew over the Confederacy on the pole.

“There is no good-looking Confederate flag. It all stands for the same thing — secession,” said Lonnie Randolph, president of the South Carolina chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.