South Carolina officials are preparing to take down the Confederate flag, which has flown over the Statehouse for more than 50 years. The state will hold a short ceremony before taking it down at 10am.

"We will bring it down with dignity and we will make sure it is stored in its rightful place," South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said.

ABC News reports, "A special armored van will take the flag to the Confederate relic room, where it eventually will be housed in a multimillion-dollar shrine lawmakers promised to build as part of a compromise to get the bill ordering the flag's removal through the House."

The flag is coming down following a deadly shooting massacre at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church which left nine people dead. Authorities belief the killing was racially motivated. "By posing with the Confederate flag before the shootings, suspect Dylann Storm Roof, who has not yet entered a plea to nine counts of murder, convinced some that the flag's reputation for white supremacy and racial oppression had trumped its symbolism of Southern heritage and ancestral pride."

"People say he was wrapped in hate, that he was a hateful person," said Democratic Rep. Justin Bamberg. "Well, his hate was wrapped in the cloak of that Confederate flag. That is why that flag is coming down."