Confederate flag: Where the 2016 candidates stand
Last week?s mass shooting in Charleston, S.C. ? where nine black people were killed inside the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church by a white gunman in what investigators are treating as a hate crime ? has reignited a debate over the Confederate flag, which flies atop a 30-foot flagpole outside the state Capitol building in Columbia.
Police say the suspected shooter, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, was driving a car that had an image of the Confederate flag emblazoned on the license plate when he was captured. And photos of Roof waving the flag have surfaced since his arrest.
South Carolina was the last state to fly the Confederate flag above its Statehouse. In 2000, lawmakers agreed to move it from the Statehouse dome to a Confederate war memorial on the Statehouse grounds.
Following last week?s shootings, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley ordered the state flags to be flown at half-staff following the massacre. But the Confederate flag remained unmoved.
?In South Carolina, the governor does not have legal authority to alter the flag,? a Haley spokesman explained to ABC News. ?Only the General Assembly can do that.?
On Saturday, hundreds of protesters rallied outside the Capitol in Columbia calling for the flag to be taken down. And former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney joined the chorus.
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