After a long and at times rancorous debate in the South Carolina House of Representatives, lawmakers voted 94-20 to remove the Confederate flag from the statehouse grounds.

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

Haley said she would sign the bill into law at 4 p.m. EDT, and Charleston’s Post and Courier newspaper said the flag would be removed at 10 a.m. on Friday. It will be taken to the “relic room” of a military museum in Columbia, the state capital.

I’m not going to congratulate South Carolina (but I will congratulate the individual lawmakers who fought to get this bill passed, especially Jenny Horne). The flag was raised above the capitol in 1961 to show South Carolina’s resistance to the civil rights movement; that’s its “heritage.” It originally existed as a symbol of treason, slavery and war against the United States, and it was revived as a thumb in the eye to those fighting for civil rights.

It’s good to see it finally coming down, but that slaveholders’ flag should never have been there in the first place. South Carolina doesn’t deserve credit for reversing a shameful act that never should have taken place at all.