BY HARRIET MCLEOD
South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed legislation
on Thursday to permanently remove the Confederate battle flag from the state
capitol grounds, following an emotional debate spurred by the massacre of nine
black churchgoers last month.
Haley signed the bill into law in the
State House Rotunda before an audience of legislators and dignitaries shortly
after 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT), and her office said the flag would be taken down
at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) on Friday.
The rebel banner will go to the "relic room"
of South Carolina's military museum in Columbia, the state capital.
"The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds
of the South Carolina State House," Haley said to cheers and applause.
"We will bring it down with dignity and we will make sure it is put in its
rightful place."
The flag, carried by Confederate troops on the losing
side in the 1861-1865 Civil War, is seen as a symbol of racism and slavery by
many. But others proudly hail it as an emblem of Southern heritage.
The flag has flown for 54 years at the capitol of the
first state to secede from the United States, and the state where the
Confederacy fired the first shots of the Civil War, in Charleston.
South Carolina plans to keep Friday's flag relocation
"as low-key as the national media will let us," said Haley
spokeswoman Chaney Adams.
Among those attending the signing were relatives of
"the Charleston 9," the black men and women gunned down on June 17 at
a landmark church in an apparently racially motivated slaughter.
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