As mourners lined up to view the body of South Carolina state senator and pastor Clementa Pinckney lying in state, the Confederate flag beloved by his alleged killer flew outside the Columbia capitol after a last-minute effort to take it down failed.
Pinckney was the pastor of the Emanuel AME church in Charleston where, last Wednesday, he was holding a Bible study when he and eight parishioners were shot dead by racist and alleged gunman Dylann Roof.
Pinckney’s open-casket visitation took place between 1pm and 5pm inside the capitol rotunda. Pinckney’s casket arrived on a horse-drawn military carriage to the State House grounds in Columbia. Eight state police officers in dress uniform served as pallbearers.
He is believed to be the first black man to lie under the capitol rotunda since at least reconstruction in the 1860s, and the first person to lie there since Governor Carroll Cambell in 2005, the Associated Press reported.
Governor Nikki Haley and other politicians came out onto the State House steps to pay their respects to the 41-year-old Democrat, who had been widely admired for the way he blended politics with his faith.
Pinckney was well-known in the state, representing Jasper County as a Democrat in the state legislature for 18 years and preaching since the age of 13. He helped build support for legislation to mandate police body-worn cameras as an accountability tool, after a North Charleston police officer fatally shot 50-year-old black South Carolinian Walter Scott, and was described as a “political spirit lifter” by observers.
Inside the rotunda, mourners filed by Pinckney’s open casket and were greeted by his widow and two young daughters. In a bizarre twist, the casket was next to a statue of 19th-century South Carolina politician John C Calhoun, a defender of slavery who was the seventh US vice president.
Hours before the wake began, some state legislators in South Carolina were reportedly looking for a loophole to temporarily remove the Confederate flag, the Post and Courier reported. A large black drape has already been placed over a rotunda window with a view of the Confederate flag outside, according to the Associated Press.
The flag, flown during the secession of the south in 1861, is believed by many to be a symbol of the worst of the south’s history of racial oppression. State legislators on Tuesday introduced a bill to debate removing the flag, which requires the agreement of both houses of the state legislature, and the Republican governor, Nikki Haley, who has called for it to be taken down.
In Alabama, the Republican governor, Robert Bentley, ordered the flag removed from that state’s capitol building on Wednesday morning. Legislators in Mississippi have also proposed removing the flag.
Republican South Carolina state representative William Chumley told CNN on Tuesday that his constituents still wanted the Confederate flag flown over the statehouse.
“I think that misuse and miseducation of that flag has probably pushed it to this point,” said Chumley. In the same interview, Chumley pivoted to a common pro-firearm talking point, the so-called “good guys with guns” argument.
“These people sat in there waiting their turn to be shot. That’s sad, and somebody in there with the means of self-defense could have stopped this, and we’d have less funerals than we’re having,” Chumley said. “Why didn’t somebody just do something? I mean, why, you’ve got one skinny person shooting a gun.”
The comments have since been widely condemned. Chumley is also one of three campaign co-chairs in South Carolina for Republican Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign.
Pinckney’s funeral is scheduled for Friday, where President Obama is expected to give the eulogy. The first lady, Michelle Obama, and Vice-President Joe Biden are also scheduled to attend.
