As S.C. honors victims, Alabama lowers flags

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 of saving souls.

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 Church where the shootings took place to show their faith and restore their sanctuary.

“Because of our faith we have shown up once more again to declare that Jesus lives and because he lives, we can face tomorrow,” interim pastor Norvel Goff intoned before a gathering that included 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.

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.

Many lawmakers said change is imperative after shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof, a 21-year-old white man, was charged with nine counts of murder.

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.

For many, especially in the South, this is all happening too fast.

Ben Jones, the actor who played Cooter on the “Dukes of Hazard” 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.