It Takes Teamwork to Lower Banner

Look closely when that Confederate flag comes down from the top of the South Carolina state capitol and you’ll see the hands of sports figures tugging on the rope.

They didn’t do it by themselves, but members of the sports community from Lou Holtz to Serena Williams helped bolster the public outcry and economic backlash that led to the South Carolina Senate’s vote Wednesday night to remove the flag.

Next up is a procedural vote and a full reading in the State House.

For starters, the Senate did the right thing. And so did the coaches and players who took a stand, who finally stood up for something that could not be measured strictly in recruiting advantages or publicity ratings.

Sports aren’t insulated from society. They influence and are influenced by the greater culture. Sometimes the need to do what the conscience dictates supersedes competition. Holtz, the South Carolina football coach, and South Carolina basketball Coach Eddie Fogler, Clemson football Coach Tommy Bowden and basketball Coach Larry Shyatt were among the marchers protesting the Confederate flag last week. The Penn State baseball team said it wouldn’t play any more games in South Carolina until the flag came down. Wednesday, Williams said she would not play in the Family Circle Cup at Hilton Head next week.

All of this came on top of a boycott of the state suggested by the NAACP.

The Confederate flag represents more than just an economic system based on the enslavement of Africans and the eradication of their culture. The flag is a representation of a stubbornness that caused the greatest toll on American life of any conflict. If you love this country, there’s no way you can like that flag.

According to data from the United States Civil War Center Web site run by Louisiana State University, the Civil War resulted in more than 558,000 deaths. That’s 150,000 more Americans than were killed in World War II. It’s more than twice as many deaths as the combined losses suffered by Americans in World War I, Korea and Vietnam.

At the end of Abraham Lincoln’ Gettysburg Address--a 10-sentence masterpiece in which he praised those who fought for the Union--he asked that the assembled crowd dedicate themselves to the same cause as those who gave their lives so “that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Now which cause did those who fought under the Confederate flag champion? The defenders of the flag complain that the Confederate flag was misappropriated by the Ku Klux Klan, whose members used it to champion their racial hatred.

They say the flag should stay to honor the heritage of the South and the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy.

There’s no grand tradition here. It’s not as if these flags have flown on public buildings since the days of Robert E. Lee.

In fact, most flags went up to literally fly in the face of the Civil Rights movement.

Georgia adopted a state flag that incorporated the rebel flag and the Georgia state seal in 1956 to protest school integration.

The Confederate flag first went up the flagpole above the state capitol in Columbia, S.C., in 1962.

With their various protests, coaches and players did their part to raise awareness of the issue.

What was missing were the voices from above, the leaders of the golf and tennis tours.

None of the major sports leagues has a franchise in South Carolina. But when the NFL faced a similar issue it yanked the Super Bowl from Arizona after the state’s voters did not ratify a holiday for Martin Luther King. When the voters came around, so did the NFL.

It might have been asking too much for an organization such as the PGA Tour--it foolishly went ahead and played the 1990 PGA Championship at the historically exclusionary Shoal Creek Country Club in Birmingham, Ala., and is making Casey Martin drive his cart through legal hoops to compete on the tour--to back such a cause. A champion of the underdog the PGA is not.

Somewhat lost amid the flag controversy was the fact that South Carolina had yet to adopt a King holiday. A compromise to have a King holiday (and establish a separate holiday to commemorate Confederate Memorial Day) passed in the state House.

Some horses move slower than others. It was good to see some sports people in the saddle, applying the whip.

So now South Carolina is moving toward the finish line. Finally. When you think of sports and South Carolina, you can think of matchups instead of the Confederacy.

Hurry up and get the flag down. I hear they have some lovely golf courses in Hilton Head.

*

J.A. Adande can be reached at his e-mail address: j.a.adande@latimes.com