CONTROVERSIAL BANNER, PICTURES OF CONFEDERATE GENERALS WILL BE RETURNED TO YORK COUNTY COURT HOUSE …
The Confederate flag will once again be displayed in a county courtroom in South Carolina after the local official who removed it earlier this year acknowledged he did so in violation of state law.
York County, S.C. clerk of court David Hamilton removed the banner – and pictures of Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson – when the local county courthouse was reopened this year after a six-year, $10 million renovation.
Now he’s thought better of this unilateral decision, citing its failure to conform with a state law governing the handling of both Civil War and Civil Rights monuments and markers.
“Upon a more formal review and inquiry regarding the Heritage Act, a stricter interpretation does limit the relocation,” he wrote in a statement to media outlets.
“Therefore, the items should be returned to the courtroom,” Hamilton’s letter added.
Take a look …
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This website did not necessarily object to Hamilton’s original decision. Hell, back in 2015 we were the first media outlet in the state of South Carolina to call for the removal of the flag from the grounds of the State House. Our column to that effect was published less that 48 hours after the “Holy City Massacre,” a senseless, premeditated and racially motivated slaughter of nine black churchgoers by a 21-year-old white supremacist.
Unlike former S.C. governor Nikki Haley, we didn’t have to wait for our crony capitalist masters to tell us the right thing to do in that situation.
Having said that, we did note that Hamilton received some “bad advice” regarding his authority to remove the banner.
The state’s Heritage Act – passed in 2000 when the Confederate flag was first removed from the dome of the S.C. State House – is still in effect. It was amended to remove the flag from the grounds of the State House in the spring of 2015, but at the time Republican S.C. Speaker of the House Jay Lucas made it clear he would abide no further historical sanitization.
That law explicitly states that “any monument, marker, memorial, school, or street erected or named in honor of the Confederacy or the civil rights movement located on any municipal, county, or state property shall not be removed, changed, or renamed without the enactment of a joint resolution by a two-thirds vote of the membership of each house of the General Assembly.”
Stay tuned …
Just when you thought the debate over the flag was over, right?
(Banner via iStock)