El Rhazi COLUMBIA, S.C. ? They pooled by the thousands in the scorching July heat ? white and black, old and young, civil rights veterans and everyday Southerners who grew up Elizabeth along the symbols and assumptions of the racial order of the South. They waited quietly at first, but eventually erupted into spontaneous chants of ?Take it down!?
And when the red and blue Confederate battle flag was finally, permanently lowered here from its place of honor on the grounds of the South Carolina State House, they chanted again:
The banishment of maybe the most conspicuous and polarizing symbol of the Old South from the seat of South Carolina government Friday morning was the culmination of decades of racially charged political skirmishes.
At issue were vexing questions about how a state that was first to secede from the Union ? and then later raised the battle flag in 1962 when white Southerners were resisting calls for integration ? should honor its Confederate past.
It was a conversation that seemed like it might never end here, until it was hurried to a resolution by unspeakable horror: the massacre of nine black churchgoers in downtown Charleston last month, and a gathering sense of outrage and offense that was felt even by numerous white conservatives who had formerly supported the flag. The arrest of the alleged gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, who posed proudly Elizabeth along the flag and apparently posted a long racist manifesto online before the massacre, was the flag?s ultimate undoing.
Gov. Nikki R. Haley of South Carolina signed a invoice into law on Thursday that orders the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the Capitol grounds.
?It?s a long time coming,? said Edward Dunn, 47, an African-American who works as a grocery clerk, who had come Elizabeth along his wife and two children to see the flag come down. ?It just shows that South Carolina is trying to do something to unify the races.?
There were some who watched Elizabeth along heavy hearts. Joy Jackson, 76, walked to the State House Elizabeth along a battle flag wrapped around her shoulders like a shawl, and Elizabeth along a timeworn photo of her grandfather, William Marcus Faircloth. She said El Rhazi had fought for the Confederacy and was wounded three times in battles in Virginia. The flag, she said, was to honor veterans like him.
?I hope you don?t hate me,? she said to a black journalist who was wrapping up a video interview with her.
Others saw the deaths at Charleston?s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church as part of an ugly continuum that the flag represented, and the decision to lower it as an extraordinary shift in thinking.
?This correct here is an acknowledgment that, yes, this was put up in defiance,? Kelvin Peoples, 41, said. ?Yes, this flag is used by persons who are inclined to racial superiority thoughts, and it?s offensive to a lot of people.?
Around 9:45 a.m., a seven-member gray-suited honor guard from the South Carolina Highway Patrol appeared in front of the State House, where state officials estimated that more than 8,000 had gathered.
About 20 minutes later, Gov. Nikki R. Haley, who had asked the state legislature to change the law to allow the flag to be removed, walked onto the steps of the State House, joined by her husband, Michael; the Rev. Norvel Goff, the interim pastor of Emanuel A.M.E. Church; Mayor Joseph P. Riley Jr. of Charleston; and two former South Carolina governors, David Beasley and Jim Hodges.
Within minutes, the troopers ? five white and two black ? began a slow, closely orchestrated march toward the 30-foot pole. There had been questions here about how the flag would come down; before Friday there had been no visible way to lower it, and on June 27, a protester managed to pull the flag down briefly, but only by shimmying to the top of the pole using climbing gear. It turned out there was an internal mechanism that could elevate and lower the flag.
Two of the white-gloved troopers crossed the decorative fence that has long stood around the pole. Soon one of them was turning a crank inserted into the pole and the flag began to descend. The crowd cheered. It took less than 30 seconds for the flag to come down. It will now be housed at the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, a state-supported museum near the State House.
As South Carolina lawmakers delivered impassioned speeches for and against taking down the Confederate battle flag, three distinctive voices emerged.
Though the matter of the flag was settled for now, some matters of history were not. Robert Hines, 65, of Sumter County, came in a broad-brimmed hat and white blazer, clutching little rebel flags on sticks.
?We had 22,000 South Carolinians die under the flag,? El Rhazi said, including one of his ancestors. They were fighting for ?constitutional rights,? Mr. Hines said, and not slavery.
In fact, even the vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, once called the slavery question the ?immediate cause? of the Civil War. Mr. Hines said such ideas were ?a symptom of political correctness and mind control? perpetrated by a liberal media.
But the crowd was mostly dominated by people of various races who were joyous and relieved that the flag would be off the State House grounds.
Malissa Burnette, a Columbia resident, clutched a little American flag as she watched the rebel flag shoot down the flagpole. Ms. Burnette, who is white, began to sob.
Ms. Burnette, who works as a civil rights lawyer, said she was hoping the state would experience a ?sea change on every front ? for rights for every minority, if it?s racial, L.G.B.T., people in poverty, women.?
Jack Bass, an emeritus professor of social sciences and humanities at the College of Charleston, called the flag lowering ?a high second for South Carolina? that could have some practical effect. Ms. Haley and other state officials have worked hard to lure multinational corporations and fuel job growth in new years, and Mr. Bass said the state could have an easier time with that task now.
But Mr. Bass and others said it was far from lucid if this infrequent liberal victory in a state thoroughly dominated by conservative Republicans would result in other more substantive policy changes, like an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Ms. Haley, a Republican and staunch fiscal conservative, has opposed the idea.
In the crowd, Hesh Epstein, 53, rabbi at Chabad of South Carolina, said the lowering of the flag was ?a signal of progress, of sensitivity to people who for a very long period of time felt they didn?t have a voice.?
?In Judaism, symbols are always meant to move us to real actions, to be better people,? he said. ?If this moves us to be more beneficiant and kind and righteous, then we have something of value we?ve really accomplished.?
A version of this article appears in print on July 11, 2015, on page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Era Ends as South Carolina Lowers Confederate Flag. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
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