Jenny Horne: How a descendant of the president of the Confederacy helped vanquish his

And for a moment, it seemed as if the Confederate flag just might keep flying after all.

But then Jenny Horne decided that she had had enough.

The 42-year-old lawyer from Summerville stepped up to the podium and delivered words so raw and impassioned they would immediately go viral on the Internet. More important, her four-minute speech would alter the course of the debate, and with it, South Carolina history. The state where the Civil War began, where Strom Thurmond presided as governor, and father of the segregationist Dixiecrats, a state steeped proudly in history and its symbols, disavowed the most freighted symbol of them all, the Confederate flag.

“I cannot 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,” Horne said, shouting through tears. “For the widow of Sen. Pinckney and his two young daughters, that would be adding insult to injury.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...isingly-personal-speech-it-needed-to-be-done/