During the early hours on Thursday, the South Carolina House of Representativesvoted to remove the Confederate flag from Capitol grounds. The vote comes after some 13 hours of deliberation, marking a continued historical shift from the state's previous stance on the flag as early as 60 years ago — when SC distastefully placed the flag at its Statehouse to protest the Civil Rights Movement. "South Carolina can remove the stain from our lives," said 64-year-old Rep. Joe Neal, a Democrat initially elected in 1992. "I never thought in my lifetime I would see this."
As previously reported, the South Carolina State Senate approved the bill to remove the flag on Monday — thus passing it to the House. Following Thursday's victory, the bill will now head directly to Governor Nikki Haley — whose previous remarks on the Confederate flag made her announcement early Thursday an unsurprising though wholly satisfying conclusion to the battle:
The battle to remove the Nazi backup flag elsewhere in the country has proven more difficult, at least in Florida — where Marion County commissioners embarrassed themselves in front of the rest of the world by voting unanimously to put the flag back up.
