Activists urge South Carolina capitol to take down rebel flag after massacre

South Carolina should remove the Confederate battle flag from the state capitol grounds, religious and local elected leaders urged on Monday, after a white gunman last week allegedly shot dead nine black worshippers at a historic Charleston church.

The demand for lawmakers to remove the rallying symbol of the pro-slavery South during the U.S. Civil War follows revelations that 21-year-old Dylann Roof, charged with Wednesday's attack on the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, had posted a racist manifesto on the Internet and posed with the flag.

A group of black and white leaders called for a rally Tuesday at the State House in Columbia to bring their demand directly to lawmakers.

"The time has come to remove this symbol of hate and division from our state capitol," said Reverend Nelson Rivers, pastor of the Charity Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, South Carolina.

"The time has come for the General Assembly to do what it ought to have done a long time ago, which is to remove this symbol of divisiveness and even terrorism to some," said Rivers, who is black and works with the National Action Network civil-rights group.

Opponents of the flag consider it an emblem of slavery and say that it has become a rallying symbol for racism and xenophobia in the United States. Supporters of keeping the flag up say it is a symbol of the South's history and culture.

Roof was arrested on Thursday and charged with nine counts of murder for allegedly gunning down members of a Bible study group at the "Mother Emanuel" church after sitting with them for an hour on Wednesday night.

The attack, in a year in which the United States has been rocked by protests over police killings of unarmed black men, has inflamed a national debate on race relations, policing and the criminal justice system.

President Barack Obama weighed in a podcast posted online on Monday, saying the killings showed the United States still had a long way to go in addressing racism, using an epithet to make his point.

"We're not cured of it," Obama told Mark Maron, host of the "WTF" podcast. "And it's not just a matter of it not being polite to say 'nigger' in public. That's not the measure of whether racism still exists."

'DOESN'T BELONG'

South Carolina state representative Doug Brannon, a Republican, said in a phone interview he has drafted legislation to remove the flag from the State House grounds.

"It doesn't belong there. It is a symbol of hurt to a large percentage of this state's population. In my opinion, it's an anchor and is holding us back."

South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, was set to make remarks at a press conference at 4:00 p.m. (2000 GMT). She will call for the flag to be removed from the State House grounds, the Charleston Post and Courier newspaper reported, citing unnamed sources.

"The Confederate battle flag years and years ago was appropriated as a symbol of hate," said Charleston Mayor Joseph Riley, who is white. "It is a piece of history and it belongs in a history museum."

Riley, who has been the city's mayor for four decades, in 2000 organized a 120-mile (193 km) march from Charleston to the state capital, Columbia, calling for the flag's removal.

The group on Monday spoke in North Charleston, South Carolina, where a former police officer was charged with murdering a black civilian by shooting him in the back after he fled a traffic stop, in an incident captured on video on a bystander's phone.

Several speakers said the flag's presence at the state's capitol sent an unappealing message about South Carolina to the rest of the world and that taking the flag down would be only a small first step toward smoothing relations in the state.

"Ridding the flag from the front of the State House is a start," said state Senator Marlon Kimpson, who is black. "But let me underscore this: It will not solve the racial divide in South Carolina."

Outside the church, visitors continued to stop to remember the slain, among them Melvin Wright, 42, who said he supported the call to remove the flag.

"It symbolizes hatred to me," said Wright, a Charleston native.

(Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Bernadette Baum and James Dalgleish)