Confederate Flag To Be Removed From Capitol Grounds In South Carolina
By Diana Rocco
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A historic change will take place in South Carolina Friday after the Governor took action on the Confederate flag today.
Republican Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill removing the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol in Columbia.
It will come down Friday at 10 a.m.
Weeks after nine people were gunned down inside a Charleston, South Carolina church, South Carolina's lawmakers will remove the emblem of the Confederate Army.
"It just became part of culture, part of what people grew up with and there was a lot of denial that the Confederacy had anything to do with slavery," said Temple University Professor Gregory Urwin.
Gregory Urwin, professor of American military history at Temple University, says the flag carried by the southern army during the Civil War means different things to different people, but one thing cannot be denied.
"The Confederacy was founded to protect slavery, there's no denying that, only slave states left the Union."
"You can't ignore heritage, you can't do it. It's not fair to the other side," said President of the Bucks County Civil War Museum George Hoffman.
George Hoffman is the President of the Bucks County Civil War Museum. In it hangs original flags of the Civil War and the nation's early years.
"That's original, the stains on it are blood stains."
Hoffman says the flag will always have a place in history, but whether it flies on state grounds is for lawmakers to decide.
"You can't erase the war, the war's going to be there. It was the largest and most horrendous war in our history," said Hoffman.
(Reporter:) "Did South Carolina get it right here today?"
"I think so," said Urwin.
"By taking this Confederate symbol off the state capitol grounds, it's like South Carolina is finally saying without any reservation, we're back in the United States."
After much debate, South Carolina's lawmakers voted overwhelmingly, 94-20, to remove the Confederate flag, one lawmaker describing it as, "taking a symbol of division off the front yard."
