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As S.C. honors Charleston church shooting victims, Alabama takes down Confederate flags

 
A South Carolina Highway Patrol honor guard carries the casket of Sen. Clementa Pinckney to the  Statehouse on Wednesday in Columbia, S.C. Pinckney's open coffin was being put on display under the dome where he served the state for nearly 20 years. Pinckney was one of those killed in a mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. [Associated Press]
A South Carolina Highway Patrol honor guard carries the casket of Sen. Clementa Pinckney to the Statehouse on Wednesday in Columbia, S.C. Pinckney's open coffin was being put on display under the dome where he served the state for nearly 20 years. Pinckney was one of those killed in a mass shooting at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston. [Associated Press]
Published June 25, 2015

COLUMBIA, S.C. — 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 in the church.

Meeting for Wednesday night Bible study exactly one week after Pinckney and eight others were fatally shot, a crowd of people packed the basement of Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church to show their faith and restore their sanctuary.

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.

In Montgomery, where the Confederacy was formed 154 years ago and where Jefferson Davis was elected its 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.

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?"

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 flagmakers 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, it 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.

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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 relatives are glad to see states taking action. "We appreciate the efforts of the state to remove the flag," she said.