Earlier in the week the South Carolina senate overwhelmingly voted to take down the Confederate flag from a memorial next to the state capitol. Late last night the state’s House of Representatives followed suit and joined the senate in voting to pull the flag down.
Now that the House of Reps has voted, the two houses of the state legislature joined Nikki Haley–the state’s first Indian-American governor–in vowing to whitewash American history of anything Confederate.
The House voted 94-20 to banish the flag from the Capitol after more than 12 hours of debate over the historic measure.
The bill now heads to Gov. Nikki Haley for her signature. Haley started the call for removing the flag in the days after nine African-Americans were shot and killed in a historic Charleston church last month.
“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,” Haley said in a Facebook post.
If Haley signs the bill Thursday, the flag could be taken down Friday.
A two-thirds majority vote in the House was needed for final passage, a requirement of the the 2000 law that took the flag off the State House dome and put it next to the Confederate Soldier Monument on the north side of the Capitol.
The House gave final approval to the final two readings of the bill within minutes of each other at 1 a.m. Thursday. The Senate approved removing the flag on Tuesday.
The article above mentioned the governor’s Facebook note about how wonderful she thinks eliminating history is. But almost none of the comments on her entry agrees with her. Just about every single comment rips Haley for taking down the flag.
Many feel that a woman whose family is from far away India has no feeling for American history.