South Carolina lawmakers take first step to remove Confederate flag

South Carolina’s state senate has voted to take down the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds in Columbia, the first of several steps needed for it to eventually be removed.

State senators voted 37-3 on Monday in favor of removing the flag from a memorial on the capitol grounds, but the bill must go for a third and final reading before it can go before the house, where it must pass by a two-thirds vote before heading to the governor.

The third reading is scheduled to take place on Tuesday, said lieutenant governor Henry McMaster.

The push to take down the flag became more urgent for activists after a 21-year-old man killed nine black people in a Charleston church. Days after the killing, images emerged of him posing next to a Confederate flag, a symbol of the part of the United States that seceded in response to the Union’s decision to make slavery illegal.

One of the victims, Clementa Pinckney, worked inside the statehouse building as a senator.

State senator Vincent Sheheen, a Democrat and friend of Pinckney’s, has wanted the flag to be taken down for several years and introduced the latest bill. On the senate floor on Monday, Sheheen said removing the flag “is one small step that reduces the culture of division”.

Senate Republican leader Harvey Peeler said that he would oppose the bill to remove the flag, saying that his ancestors owned slaves and that taking down the flag cannot change that history. With fellow Republicans Lee Bright and Danny Verdin, he was one of three senators to vote against the bill.

The reverend Jesse Jackson, who was born in the state, was in the senate chamber on Monday for the discussion. He pushed for protests against the flag in 2000, when it was flying atop South Carolina’s statehouse. It was moved that year to its current position at a civil war memorial on the building grounds.

This move means that the flag can only be taken down with two-thirds support from the legislature. Governor Nikki Haley cannot force its removal unilaterally, though she has said she believes it should be taken down.

“I don’t think that this is going to be easy. I don’t think that it’s going to be painless,” Haley said on NBC’s Today show. “But I do think that it will be respectful, and that it will move swiftly.”

Earlier in Monday’s session, Republican state senator Lee Bright introduced an amendment that would allow voters to decide whether it should be displayed at the statehouse. His bill was tabled with a 36-3 vote, as was a bill to have it flown only on Confederate memorial day and to replace the flag with the first national flag of the Confederate States of America, which was the Confederacy’s official flag from 1861 to 1863.

Bright said he opposes taking the flag down because it associates the south’s history with the act of the killer.

“I am more against taking it down in this environment than any other time,” Bright said. “We’re placing blame on what one deranged lunatic did on people who hold their southern heritage high, and I don’t think that’s fair.”