Ten years ago, South Carolina lowered the Confederate battle flag from the Statehouse grounds.
The flag’s removal followed the racist mass shootings of nine Black parishioners on June 17, 2015, at the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
For most of those 10 years, the flag has sat on the back wall of the Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum in Columbia.
The nylon flag is framed behind plexiglass. There's a tiny plaque to the side.
The flag is surrounded by century-old artifacts, including several flags from the Confederacy that are riddled with tears, bullet holes and covered in gun powder.
Allen Roberson, the museum's executive director, was handed the flag after it was lowered from the pole.
"Personally, it was a sense of duty that the state needed this and needed a solution," he told SC Public Radio. "And you couldn't get past what happened in Charleston. The flag is no longer disconnected from what happened in Charleston."
Roberson said the flag that's on display at the museum only flew for nine days.
It was replaced after Bree Newsome, an activist from Charlotte, climbed the flagpole and took down the Confederate battle flag 10 days after the Charleston shooting.
Roberson's museum also houses that flag.
Ten years ago, Roberson considered installing a more in-depth exhibit to highlight the Confederate battle flag lowered from the grounds a decade ago. But that would have hinged on funding.
"We didn't get funded for it, so we finally just put it on the wall. It could have been an interesting exhibit if you really dealt with it, because it's such a polarizing object," he said.
Today, the museum's exhibits span the Colonial era to modern times.
It includes artifacts from the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and the Vietnam War.
Visitation rates have grown, especially in the past few years.
From 2022 to 2023, the museum saw more than 41,000 visitors, almost double the amount from the year prior.
Roberson said he wants the museum to be known about more than just the Confederate battle flag.
"It's more than just one flag. It's more than just the Civil War," Roberson said. "Our collection has doubled in the last 25 years."
He wants the museum to tell the state's full military history and try to stay out of politics.
