In 1994 the NAACP began a campaign to remove the Confederate flag from all public property in South Carolina. Proponents of the Confederate flag tried to broker a compromise by removing the flag from the Statehouse dome and placing another battle flag near a Southern soldiers’ monument on the front lawn of the Statehouse grounds. The NAACP responded by calling for an economic boycott of South Carolina and by organizing a succession of protest marches. Every year on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day thousands march to the Statehouse in Columbia to call for the retirement of the Confederate flag.  On January 17, 2000, more than 50,000 marchers rallied at the Statehouse in the largest civil rights demonstration in the South.