South Carolina Governor Says Confederate Flag Must Come Down
South Carolina governor Nikki Haley called for the removal of the state capitol Confederate flag Monday, saying one way or another, the flag will come down this summer.
Removing the flag—which continued to fly last week, even as the United States flag was lowered to half-mast after the Charleston shooting—requires a two-thirds vote of both houses of the General Assembly.
Haley was joined at the press conference by Senators Lindsay Graham and Tim Scott, and promised the flag would come down even if the Assembly did not vote to remove it.
“It’s time to move the flag from the Capitol grounds,” the governor said, speaking to reporters at the Capitol in Columbia.
While Governor Haley said that residents have the right to show the Confederate battle flag on private property, ”the State House is different, and the events of this past week call upon us to look at this in a different way.”
South Carolina state Rep. Doug Brannon says he plans to introduce legislation to remove the flag from all of South Carolina’s federal buildings, telling CBS, “The switch that flipped was the death of my friend Sen. [Clementa] Pinckney... I’ve been in the House five years. I should have filed that bill five years ago. But the time is now, I can’t let my friend the senator’s death go without fundamental change in South Carolina,”
