As South Carolina honors victims, Alabama lowers its flags
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| South
Carolina Highway Patrol honor guards stand over Sen. Clementa
Pinckney’s body as members of the public file past in the Statehouse,
Wednesday, June 24, 2015, in Columbia, S.C. President Barack Obama is
scheduled to deliver the eulogy at Pinckney's funeral Friday morning at
the College of Charleston. |
COLUMBIA, S.C.
(AP) -- State senator and pastor Clementa Pinckney was carried
Wednesday into the Statehouse where he served the people for nearly 20
years, becoming the first African-American since Reconstruction to rest
in honor in the South Carolina Rotunda. Hours later, his congregation
returned to the scene of a massacre, keeping up his work of saving
souls.
To show their faith and restore their
sanctuary, about 150 people packed into the basement of Charleston's
Emanuel African Methodist Church where Pinckney and eight parishioners
were shot exactly one week before.
"We decided
to come together rather than pull apart," interim pastor Norvel Goff
told the multiracial gathering of people who sat in neat rows of folding
chairs Wednesday evening.
"It's our choice.
It's our choice not to raise hell and tear up the city or tear up the
streets because something tragic happened," Goff said.
Among those attending the session were several family members of shooting victim Myra Thompson.
"It
is a powerful testimony that they are able to come," Goff said of
Thompson's relatives, who were applauded by others in the audience.
The
killings appear to be creating waves of soul-searching that are
reverberating far beyond the historic black church and the state Capitol
where Pinckney's widow and two young daughters met his horse-drawn
carriage, evoking memories of black and white images of other slain
civil rights figures five decades earlier.
In
state after state, the Confederate symbols embraced by the shooting
suspect have suddenly come under official disrepute. Gov. Nikki Haley
started the groundswell Monday by calling on South Carolina lawmakers to
debate taking down the Confederate battle flag flying in front of the
Statehouse. But Alabama's governor was able to act much more swiftly,
issuing an executive order that brought down four secessionist flags on
Wednesday.
In Montgomery, where the
Confederacy was formed 154 years ago and where Jefferson Davis was
elected president, Gov. Robert Bentley, a conservative Republican,
compared the banner to the universally shunned symbols of Nazi Germany, a
stunning reversal in a region where the flag has played a huge cultural
role.
The iconic Confederate battle flag in
particular "is offensive to some people because unfortunately, it's like
the swastika; some people have adopted that as part of their
hate-filled groups," Bentley explained.
In
South Carolina, making any changes to "heritage" symbols requires a
two-thirds supermajority of both houses of the state legislature.
Prodded by Haley, lawmakers voted overwhelmingly for a debate later this
summer, but few wanted to risk ugly words during a week of funerals.
As
mourners filed by Pinckney's open casket, a makeshift drape over a huge
second-floor window obscured the secessionist battle flag outside, only
emphasizing how quickly this symbol of Southern pride has fallen into
official disrepute.
The 41-year-old Pinckney,
named lead pastor at "Mother Emanuel" in 2010, spent a lot of time in
the lobby where, at one point in the day, five state senators and two
former governors greeted mourners. Pinckney arrived at the Statehouse as
a page, and in 1997 became the youngest African-American member elected
to the House at that time. He became a senator in 2001.
Those
honoring him also had to file past a statue of John C. Calhoun, the
vice president who argued in the 1820s and 1830s that slavery was a
"positive good," and that states should be able to pick the federal laws
they want to follow.
Other conservative Republicans weighed in around the country Wednesday.
Both
of Mississippi's U.S. senators and a U.S. representative endorsed
removing the Confederate symbol from the flag the state has flown since
Reconstruction, even though the state's voters decided to keep it back
in 2001. Sen. Thad Cochran declared his intentions a day after Attorney
General Jim Hood, the only Democrat holding statewide office in
Mississippi, said "You've got to ask yourself the question: What would
Jesus do in this circumstance?"
Other
lawmakers and activists took aim at symbols including a bust of
Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest in
Tennessee's Senate, a sculpture of Confederate President Jefferson Davis
in the Kentucky Rotunda, the vanity license plates used by thousands of
motorists and Minnesota's Lake Calhoun.
Many
said change is imperative after shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof, a
21-year-old white man, was charged with nine counts of murder.
Roof
was captured after a motorist spotted his Confederate license plate.
Images on a website created in his name months before the attacks show
him posing with the Confederate flag and burning and desecrating the
U.S. flag. He also poses at Confederate museums, former slave
plantations and slave graves. In an essay on the same website, the
writer wishes every white person had a chance to brutalize blacks before
the Civil War.
Roof has been appointed
federal public defenders, and Justice Department officials are in
agreement that the massacre satisfies the definition of a hate crime,
which means federal charges are likely, according to a federal law
enforcement official. The official spoke with The Associated Press on
condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.
Attorney
General Loretta Lynch, while declining to discuss details, said
Wednesday that hate crimes are "the original domestic terrorism."
Businesses
also have acted swiftly. Wal-Mart, e-Bay, Amazon, Target and Sears are
among those saying Confederate merchandise will be gone from their
stores and online sites. At least three major flag makers said they will
no longer manufacture the rebel battle flag.
And
Warner Bros. announced it will no longer license toy cars and models of
the "General Lee," car with the Confederate flag on its roof that
starred in the 1980s TV show "Dukes of Hazzard."
For many, especially in the South, this is all happening too fast.
Ben
Jones, the actor who played Cooter on the TV series, said these symbols
are under attack by a "wave of political correctness" that is vilifying
Southern culture. He said Confederate items will never be removed from
the Cooter's Place stores he owns in Tennessee and Virginia.
A growing number of the Confederate symbols that appear all over the South have been defaced by graffiti.
The
words "Black Lives Matter" were spray-painted Wednesday on a
century-old Confederate memorial in St. Louis, not far from Ferguson,
Missouri, where the phrase took root after a white officer killed an
unarmed black man last August. In Charleston, the words "racist" and
"slavery" were painted Tuesday on a monument to Calhoun, just a block
from where the Emanuel AME church stands on Calhoun Street.
Historian Robert Chase says the vandalism reflects anger over deep-seated racism.
"The
way Dylann Roof saw this was about recapturing the space of Charleston
as a white space and the removal of African-Americans from that space,"
said Chase, a historian at the State University of New York at Stony
Brook.
Rick Wade, a senior adviser on
President Barack Obama's campaigns in South Carolina, wants more than
flags to come down from statehouses.
"I want
the flag to come down in our hearts. There has to be a deeper
conversation," Wade said. "We as individuals have to look in the mirror
and make sure you don't have a flag of hate waving in your heart."
The
few lawmakers openly defending the flag include Republican Jonathon
Hill, a freshman South Carolina representative who said it should remain
above the monument to fallen Confederate soldiers, and that addressing
it now disrespects the victims' families.
"Dylann
Roof wanted a race war, and I think this has a potential to start one
in the sense that it's a very divisive issue," Hill said. "I think it
could very well get ugly."
But as Alana
Simmons made funeral arrangements for her grandfather, Emanuel AME
pastor Daniel Simmons Sr., she said the relatives are glad to see South
Carolina and other states taking action. "We appreciate the efforts of
the state to remove the flag," she said.
Other
viewings and funerals for the nine victims are scheduled through
Monday. Obama plans to memorialize the victims Friday morning during
Pinckney's funeral at the College of Charleston.
. “He will be coming here to the birthplace of America, the country that has welcomed immigrants forever.”
