The flag of South Carolina State University will fly on the Statehouse dome below the state flag on Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, to celebrate the Bulldogs winning a national football championship. (Photo by Travis Bell/STATEHOUSE CAROLINA/Special to the SC Daily Gazette)
COLUMBIA — This year’s annual King Day at the Dome will feature a first: The flag of South Carolina’s only public historically Black university will fly atop the Statehouse as people gather below to honor Martin Luther King Jr.
The main speaker from the Statehouse steps Jan. 19 will be New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker. Others include California Rep. Ro Khanna and Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison of Columbia, who delivered last year’s keynote speech, according to the NAACP’s state chapter, which organizes the annual event.
Above them, from sunrise to sunset, the flag of South Carolina State University will fly just under the U.S. and state flags. The unfurling officially celebrates the Bulldogs’ 40-38 fourth-overtime victory at last month’s Celebration Bowl, which made them national football champions for historically Black colleges and universities.
The flag-flying honor is definitely a first for South Carolina State, according to the college. It’s believed to be the first time any HBCU flag has flown from the dome.
The timing on MLK Day magnifies the meaning: 26 years ago, the NAACP organized the first King Day at the Dome to protest the Confederate flag flying in the same spot.
Rep. Hamiton Grant called the recognition of his alma mater, by order of GOP Gov. Henry McMaster, a symbol of unity across political differences.
“I think that should send a message to the people of South Carolina that we tend to agree more than we disagree,” the Columbia Democrat told the SC Daily Gazette. “Our history as a school, our history as a people and what we mean to the state, is something everyone should be proud of.”
Grant said college officials requested the Jan. 19 date.
He and Sen. Deon Tedder, also a South Carolina State graduate, will jointly present the flag to the Bulldogs football team in Orangeburg during its celebratory parade days later, Tedder wrote in his Dec. 19 letter to McMaster.
“It will be my honor,” McMaster wrote back about having the flag flown on MLK Day.
South Carolina State’s Dec. 13 victory in Atlanta over Prairie View A&M marked the Bulldogs’ second national HBCU championship and third appearance at the Celebration Bowl in five years. They beat Jackson State 31-10 in 2021 to take the title.
It’s become tradition for a college flag to fly on the dome following a national championship.
But lawmakers didn’t make a flag request following the Bulldogs’ 2021 win, Grant said.
Last month’s win, which avenged the Bulldogs’ 28-7 loss to Jackson State a year earlier, was dubbed by HBCU Gameday “one of the most dramatic finishes in HBCU football history.”
“This championship represents more than an athletic triumph; it is a moment of pride for the entire state of South Carolina,” Tedder, D-North Charleston, wrote Dec. 15 in his initial letter to McMaster that didn’t seek a specific date for the flag’s flying. “It celebrates the dedication of student-athletes, coaches, alumni, and supporters whose collective efforts embody excellence, resilience, and unity.”
This year’s theme for King Day at the Dome is “The Time is Now.”
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The event starts at 8 a.m. at Zion Baptist Church on Washington Street. Around 10 a.m., participants will walk the half-mile to the Statehouse for speeches.
The event celebrating King’s legacy has become a must-attend event for Democratic presidential candidates courting the support of Black voters in this early primary state.
In 2020, Joe Biden was among eight White House hopefuls marching arm in arm from the church to the Statehouse. They did not include Booker, who was instead at his Columbia campaign office thanking staff after dropping out of the race a week earlier.
This year, Booker will give the keynote address.
Last spring, he broke the record for talking the longest on the U.S. Senate floor. His speech, at more than 25 hours, surpassed the 24-hour record set in 1957 by South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, then a Democrat, as he filibustered civil rights legislation.
But Booker’s selection is not a sign of any future endorsement, should he decide to run again in 2028.
He’s giving the speech because he was the first person to reach out and ask, said Brenda Murphy, the state NAACP president.
Khanna, who represents a California district in the San Francisco Bay known as Silicon Valley, will also speak. Last July, he was in South Carolina for a four-day swing to rally opposition to the Trump administration. In Goose Creek, his “Benefits Over Billionaires” town hall instead showed Democrats’ frustrations with their own party, The Post and Courier reported.
It’s been over a decade since a Confederate flag flew over the event.
The flag came off the dome six months after the inaugural King Day at the Dome. The 2000 legislative compromise that took it down made both MLK Day and Confederate Memorial Day state holidays. It also put a smaller, square version of the battle flag on a 30-foot pole beside the Confederate monument on the Statehouse’s front lawn. Its prominent place along Columbia’s main thoroughfare made the flag more visible than it had been before.
The NAACP continued to call for the flag’s total removal from Statehouse grounds, and speakers pointed to the flag during the annual event.
But lawmakers refused to revisit the issue until 2015, after an avowed white supremacist gunned down nine people at Charleston’s historic Emanual African Methodist Episcopal Church, known as Mother Emanuel. Less than a month after the shooting, the flag and the pole it flew on were taken down. The law passed by the Legislature to do so sent the flag to a state museum.
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