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If my memory is correct - and I admit it may be faulty - the Battle Flag was put atop the State House during the centennial commemoration of the outbreak of the Civil War. That is, the flag was put up around 1961, and the civil rights movement was well underway by 1961.
If the flag was put up to protest the civil rights movement, a more appropriate time should have been after the Supreme Court handed down the Brown decision.
Putting the battle flag up kept no one "in their place". The civil rights movement's success or failure was not determined by symbolic acts but by legislative and judicial action.
No one dishonors an object by the uses to which he or she puts it. Persons may dishonor themselves, but not the object. If your contention is correct, then the Christian cross should be dishonored because many terrible acts have been committed under its color and in its name.
Strom Thurmond's actions have no bearing on this issue.
His record as a public servant will stand or fall on its own merits.
In any event, he was a member of the US Senate in 1961 and had no power over the decision by the legislature to put the Battle Flag atop the State House.

Yes, the Christian cross was also dishonored by some of the Uses to which it was put. Just as it was glorified by the redemption to it brought.

The hooked cross went from a Hindu symbol of life to a European symbol of death.

Actions have consequenses.

Georgia added the "southern cross" flag to their state flag in 1956. South Carolina put up the battleflag in 1962. Yes, it was around 100 years after the Civil war, but the Confederate flag was "the bonny blue flag that bore a single star" if you recall the confederate anthem. That flag does not have the hateful associations, so of course the all white Democrat legislature chose, of all the Southern flags that had been used, the one most used by the KKK.

I am glad it is down, and its position at a cemetary should be a warning to racists in the future.