Our view: Down with the flag, up with South Carolinian pride

Lawmakers stood together behind Gov. Nikki Haley at the S.C. State House in Columbia and listened approvingly as she declared the Confederate battle flag flying just outside the front door should come down.

History has come full circle to Charleston, the city where it all began at Fort Sumter. But this time the shots fired signified not the beginning of a war, but the beginning of the end.

Congressman Mick Mulvaney (R-SC) voiced his support for removing the flag saying: “I hope the Legislature can do the same thing now that they did 15 years ago: Take the time and effort to fashion a compromise that removes the flag in a way that all South Carolinians can rally around with pride and respect – and with the sense of community that has been on display for the world to see in Charleston.”

We support the removal of the battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Statehouse. While many Southerners say the flag represents nothing more than pride in Southern heritage and history, for others it is a symbol of prejudice and division.

While originally used to rally Confederate troops during the Civil War, a divisive event in itself, the flag was appropriated a century later by those who opposed the civil rights movement, and made it an icon of their own battle against integration and rights for African-Americans.

Rightly or wrongly, the flag has become a symbol of extremism, and it is time for it to disappear from public lands.

But we are alarmed by another extremism we are seeing – calls to rename streets and schools with Confederacy roots. Re-evaluation can be good, for instance, in Tennessee where legislators consider removing the bust of Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from the state senate. Forrest was a polarizing figure in the Civil War and is known as a prominent figure in founding the Ku Klux Klan, a group composed of mostly Confederate veterans committed to violent intimidation of blacks, northerners and republicans. Forrest was Grand Wizard until he ordered the dissolution of the organization in 1869, according to civilwar.org. We believe removing his bust could be justified.

Re-evaluating how and where we honor the past and individuals is sensible in a case-by-case basis. But we do not advocate the removal of all memorials to Confederate veterans throughout the South.

These are opportunistic attempts at using the debate concerning the battle flag to revise history. Seventy million Americans are descendents of Confederates who fought in defense of their region. That is history. The South has moved on. The Old Confederacy is gone, and we have changed for the better.

During the past half century, the South has led the nation’s growth, and we have grown with it. Our region and Lake Wylie are proof of that as we have seen our population grow has boomed almost 137 percent in more than a decade according to census figures.

South Carolina can be particularly proud of itself in the modern era, enjoying the fastest-growing economy in the Southeast. Moreover, we have a governor of Indian descent in Nikki Haley, and last year, Sen. Tim Scott became the first black man elected to the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction.

We applaud the movement from removing a divisive symbol from our midst. But we also are proud of our progress as a state, and reject attempts by extremists to have us feel otherwise.

This story was originally published July 6, 2015 at 9:48 AM with the headline "Our view: Down with the flag, up with South Carolinian pride."