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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Workers pull down the pole where the Confederate flag flew for 15 years at the South Carolina Statehouse on Friday in Columbia, S.C. For the first time since the civil rights movement, the Confederate flag was removed entirely from the South Carolina Statehouse, in a swift ceremony Friday before thousands of people who cheered as the Civil War-era banner was lowered from the 30-foot flagpole.
COLUMBIA, S.C. » The Confederate battle flag no longer flies at South Carolina’s Statehouse. But other symbols of the Civil-War South are unlikely to vanish soon.
Calls to remove the flag or other symbols since the massacre of nine people inside a black church also prompted changes in Alabama and the city of Memphis.
But the region is full of monuments to top Confederate officials. Mississippi’s state flag includes the battle flag, while Georgia’s is based on another Confederate design. License plates featuring the flag are supported by groups in several states.
Those resisting removal of the flag and other symbols say they represent Southern history and have public support.
Mark Potok, a senior fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center, says the response is South Carolina is encouraging. But he says a "kind of mental cleansing" is still long overdue in the South.
