Since they had unveiled Clem Pinckney’s portrait in the Senate that day, Joel Lourie got to talking with me about the late senator at his retirement party. Joel asked if I had seen this footage of Pinckney talking about the Confederate flag during the debate in 2000, when he the youngest member of the Senate.
I said I hadn’t, so he sent it to me.
It might give you chills to hear him on the subject, showing so much heart and idealism and love and promise.
He spoke of young people like him not wanting to still be talking about the flag for years to come.
There was no way for him, or any of us, to know that it would take his death, and those of eight others, to get us all to hear him and bring the flag down.
Speaking of youth… Dylan Roof was 6 years old at the time of this speech. I don’t know what I mean by observing that, other than to say we certainly had to talk about the flag for a long time…
The Pinckney portrait, from the Twitter feed of Tara Pettit of WACH-Fox.
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