5 Days That Left a Confederate Flag Wavering, and Likely to Fall
With dizzying speed, opponents of the flag blanketed social media. The kind of mass demonstration that, in the past, might have taken a week to organize in front of the State House had coalesced online in several hours, drowning out the flag’s supporters.
.. Within a day, its host, Moveon.org, a liberal advocacy group, told her that it was receiving 5,000 signatures an hour. “I was floored,” Ms. Hunter said.
.. Ta-Nehisi Coates, a national correspondent for The Atlantic who called for the flag’s removal in a series of searing Twitter posts, said the Black Lives Matter movement had created a rapid-response infrastructure that, soon after it was deployed, forced the entire country to confront the morality of the 154-year-old flag.
.. South Carolina’s corporate titans have long held a simple view of the Confederate flag: It was terrible for business.
.. To many of them, it was a source of embarrassment that the N.C.A.A. would not pick South Carolina to host championship events because of the flag, and in the college-sports-crazy state, coaches said it was an obstacle to recruiting.
.. She had held back a swelling tide of emotion for several days, but it was clear that if nothing happened boycotts and other ugliness could follow. Even the chairman of the Republican National Committee was preparing to issue a statement against the flag, potentially isolating Ms. Haley and the state’s other Republican leaders.