COLUMBIA, S.C. (CNN) — The Confederate battle flag, a polarizing fixture in South Carolina’s state house grounds for half a century, will flap in the wind no longer.
Early Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 94-20 to remove it, giving final approval to a bill that passed the Senate earlier in the week.
The vote count was more than the two-thirds needed — but it came after a handful of lawmakers mounted a tenacious last stand, proposing amendment after amendment that led the debate to drag on more than 12 hours.
The bill now goes to Gov. Nikki Haley, who has said she will sign it into law.
“Today, as the Senate did before them, the House of Representatives has served the State of South Carolina and her people with great dignity,” Haley said in a statement early Thursday.
“It is a new day in South Carolina, a day we can all be proud of, a day that truly brings us all together as we continue to heal, as one people and one state.”
For decades, African-Americans and others have demanded the flag come down. To them, it is a racist symbol that represents a war to uphold slavery and, later, a battle to oppose civil rights advances.
But their voices were drowned out by supporters who argued it is a symbol of Southern culture.
That all changed last month when a white gunman, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, killed nine African-American worshipers in a Charleston church.
After the massacre, photos quickly surfaced of Roof holding the battle flag, which he revered as a symbol of white supremacy.
The racially motivated attacked triggered a national wave of sympathy and renewed calls to have the battle flag removed.
According to a new CNN/ORC poll, U.S. public opinion on the Confederate flag remains about where it was 15 years ago, with 57% of Americans seeing it more as a symbol of Southern pride than of racism.
