1 arrested in fight at Statehouse over Confederate flag

The pastor, state senator Clementa Pinckney, was among the dead and the shooting suspect, Dylann Roof, was shown in photographs brandishing the flag as a symbol of hate.

Just days after nine people were killed inside a black church in South Carolina, residents across Alabama walked out of their homes on a Sunday morning to find KKK flyers packaged with pieces of candy in their driveways. South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley called for the removal of the flag from the state capitol’s grounds.

The group chose to remove the flag immediately, Newsome said, “both, as an act of civil disobedience and as a demonstration of the power people have when we work together”.

Local news media in the Southern state said the Klan has obtained a permit for a rally of 100 to 200 people on the State House grounds in Columbia on July 18. We all need to move ahead and write history instead of trying to rewrite something that happened beyond our control.

“If you’re white and proud, join the crowd”, the message says of the planned rally. “Save our land, join the Klan”.

A representative for the Loyal White Knights didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The group of vehicles were headed toward Sumter Street. “We would have preferred he’d done more towards the actual criminals instead of Christians”.

There have been at least two arrests connected with the flag in recent days.

James Spears, the Great Titan of the chapter, said the group would be rallying to protest “the Confederate flag being took [sic] down for all the wrong reasons”.

The heated debate over the Confederate flag escalated last night into an actual brawl, when about 10 flag supporters arrived at the South Carolina statehouse in Columbia and clashed with the about 30 protesters who were rallying there against the flag.

However, there’s a small population of people in the South that are proud supporters of the flag and denounce its negative connotations.

Just after dawn Saturday, a North Carolina woman scaled the more than 30-foot steel flagpole and, despite commands from Bureau of Protective Services officers to get down, removed the flag. “That was all I did, was grab my flag and I got hit in the side”.

To those who might label her an outside agitator, she said, “I say to you that humanitarianism has no borders…. This flag comes down today”. But her stand started a trend on Twitter, #FreeBreeNewsome, and gained support from celebrities around the country.