Black Granddaughter of Segregationist Strom Thurmond Praises SC for Removing Confederate Flag

http://democracynow.org - The Confederate battle flag that has flown on the South Carolina state House grounds for more than 50 years comes down today. Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill Thursday to permanently remove the flag, after the House and Senate overwhelmingly approved it earlier this week. This is final push in a decades-long struggle that began after the Confederate flag was placed on South Carolina’s Capitol dome in 1962 and was later relocated to a 30-foot flagpole at the Civil War monument after a compromise that required a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate to take it down. As Gov. Haley signed the bill in the state House rotunda Thursday, she was joined by relatives of the nine people gunned down June 17 at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston as they attended Bible study, along with three former South Carolina governors and the Rev. Jesse Jackson. The flag is set to be taken down at 10 a.m. this morning and will be moved to the state’s Military Museum in Columbia, where it will be on display in the Confederate Relic Room. For more, we speak to Wanda Williams-Bailey, the interracial granddaughter of the late South Carolina senator, former governor and longtime segregationist, Strom Thurmond, who died at the age of 100 in 2003. Months later, a woman named Essie Mae Washington-Williams came public to reveal she was the daughter of Thurmond and Carrie Butler, who was a 16-year-old African-American housekeeper in Thurmond’s home. Thurmond never publicly acknowledged Washington-Williams as his daughter or Wanda as his granddaughter.

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