South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed legislation on Thursday to permanently remove the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds, following an emotional debate spurred by the massacre of nine black churchgoers last month.

Haley signed the bill into law in the State House Rotunda in Columbia before an audience of legislators and dignitaries shortly after 4 pm EDT, and her office said the flag would be taken down at 10 am on Friday.

The rebel banner will go to the "relic room" of South Carolina's military museum in Columbia.

"The Confederate flag is coming off the grounds of the South Carolina State House," Haley said to cheers and applause. "We will bring it down with dignity and we will make sure it is put in its rightful place."

The battle flag, carried by Confederate troops on the losing side in the 1861-1865 Civil War, is seen as a symbol of racism and slavery by many, but others proudly hail it as an emblem of Southern heritage.

The flag has flown for 54 years at the capitol of the first state to secede from the United States, and the state where the Confederacy fired the first shots of the Civil War, in Charleston.

South Carolina said it planned to keep Friday's flag relocation "as low-key as the national media will let us," said Haley spokeswoman Chaney Adams.

Among those attending the signing were relatives of "the Charleston 9," the black men and women gunned down on June 17 at a landmark church in an apparently racially motivated slaughter.

Haley paid special tribute to the victims' families' forgiveness of the white man charged in the killings, Dylann Roof, 21. She said their inspirational actions played a major role in the law's passage, and said a pen from the signing would go to each of the families.

Also joining Haley, a Republican of Indian descent who is South Carolina's first non-white governor, were predecessors who supported the measure.

The governor signed the bill after the state House of Representatives gave it final approval early Thursday after 13 hours of emotional debate.

Before the signing, a small crowd gathered on the State House lawn waving "Take Down the Flag" signs as drivers honked their horns.

Others snapped photos on the last full day the banner will fly from its pole at a memorial to Confederate war dead.

(China Daily USA 07/10/2015 page2)