Jenny Horne: Republican who helped banish Confederate flag

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-33467476

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On Wednesday, South Carolina's House of Representatives spent 13 hours debating whether or not to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state's capitol in Columbia.

Some Republicans had attempted to delay a final vote by introducing amendments to the bill, which was introduced after nine black churchgoers were killed in Charleston by a gunman who had posed with the flag.

That opposition provoked fierce argument on both sides of the house and culminated in an emotional speech by one of the Republicans backing the motion.

Despite Jenny Horne's ancestry - she happens to be a descendant of Jefferson Davis, the man who led the Confederacy during the Civil War - she was furious that her colleagues couldn't come to an agreement.

With no notes, she began by saying: "The people of Charleston deserve immediate and swift removal of that flag from these grounds."

Then, struggling to hold back tears, she raised her voice: "I can not believe that we do not have the heart in this body to do something meaningful such as take a symbol of hate off these grounds on Friday."

Scuppering the bill would "be adding insult to injury" for the widow and children of her colleague Senator Clementa Pinckney, one of the nine killed in the attack, she added.

In the four-minute interjection by Ms Horne, a 42-year-old lawyer, she sought to cut through arguments about heritage made by opponents of the bill.

"I'm sorry. I have heard enough about heritage. I have a heritage. I am a life-long South Carolinian. I am a descendant of Jefferson Davis, OK?" she said.

"But that does not matter. It's not about Jenny Horne. It's about the people of South Carolina who have demanded that this symbol of hate come off the statehouse grounds."

'It needed to be done'

Speaking to the Washington Post on Thursday, Ms Horne said the bill's backers had been losing the vote before she got up to speak.

"It was going south. If what I did changed the course of the debate, and I do believe it did, then it needed to be done. Because that flag needed to come down a long time ago," she told the newspaper.

"It wasn't easy. It wasn't without emotion. But I'm so proud of my colleagues for doing the right thing. The Confederate flag is coming down," she later tweeted.

In response, one Twitter user replied: "Visceral, moving, great speech. Courage in action. Thank you thank you thank you."