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 The Civil War-era flag and related monuments have become
flashpoints after nine black men and women were gunned down at a
historic church in Charleston, South Carolina.
The suspected shooter, Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white man, had
posed with a Confederate battle flag in photos posted on a website
that displayed a racist manifesto attributed to him.
The June 17 shootings at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal church
prompted renewed calls for South Carolina to remove the Confederate
flag on the State House grounds in Columbia.
Republican Governor Nikki Haley, who added her voice to those calls
last week, on Tuesday brought a Charleston church to its feet at a
funeral for one of the victims when she declared: "That Confederate
flag will come down."
The church massacre followed a year of debate over U.S. race
relations spurred by the killings of unarmed black males by police
in Missouri, New York City and elsewhere, and the case of a black
man in Baltimore who died of injuries suffered in police custody.
The Loyal White Knights chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, based in
Pelham, North Carolina, said it will rally at the South Carolina
State House on July 18.
"We’re standing up for the Confederacy," James Spears, the chapter's
"great titan," said on Tuesday.
He said speakers would address slavery, then the Klan will hold a
cross-lighting, or cross-burning, ceremony on private property.
Haley, a Republican, said the group was not welcome in the state.
The Ku Klux Klan, a white supremacist group also known as the KKK,
is known for its history of violence toward African-Americans.
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Also on Tuesday, a statue of Ben Tillman, a segregationist former
governor and U.S. senator who died in 1918, was defaced with what
appeared to be red paint, authorities said.
The vandalism followed the arrest on Monday night of a man
confronting anti-flag protesters at the State House. Nicholas
Thompson, 25, of South Carolina was charged with disorderly conduct,
police said.
In another development on Tuesday, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie
Rawlings-Blake said she was appointing a commission to review the
Maryland city's Confederate statues and historical items.
In Virginia, the Sons of Confederate Veterans vowed to oppose
Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe's order to remove the flag from
state-issued license plates.
(Writing by Letitia Stein in Tampa, Fla.. Reporting by Harriet
McLeod in Charleston, Curtis Skinner in San Francisco, Donna Owens
in Baltimore and Gary Robertson in Richmond, Va.; Editing by Doina
Chiacu, Eric Beech, David Adams and Jonathan Oatis)
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