“Blessed are those who dwell in thy house,” a preacher told those gathered for the first service since nine black people were murdered in the church.
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The rally took place just days after a racially motivated shooting left nine people dead at a historic Charleston church.
Protesters stand on the South Carolina Statehouse steps Saturday during a rally to take down the Confederate flag.
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The rally took place outside the capitol building and included a series of speeches and chants before concluding with participants singing “We Shall Overcome.” The Associated Press reported that there were hundreds of people at the demonstration.
Demonstrators at Saturday's rally to remove the Confederate flag.
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BuzzFeed News reporter Joel Anderson was on scene and spoke with the organizers of the rally. One of those organizers, Mariangeles Borghini, expressed surprise at the large turnout, while Tom Hall, another organizer, declared that “this whole state is gonna change.”
Among the members of /r/coontown, the manifesto’s author has found a sympathetic ear. One user wrote, “If this is the real deal…he’s no different from me, really.”
lastrhodesian.com / Via lastrhodesian.com
As the world digests the alleged manifesto of the Charleston church shooting suspect, the white supremacist document is finding a sympathetic ear in the depths of Reddit's racist /r/coontown community.
The diatribe wanders from a discussion of the “historical lies, exaggerations, and myths” of slavery to outlining disdain for Latinos and Jews. It concludes by saying, “we have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.”
/r/coontown's discussion on the manifesto has elicited a degree of sympathy and understanding from the subreddit's members.
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“If this is the real deal…he's no different from me, really,” wrote one redditor that received dozens of upvotes. “Except for that shooting up a church thing, that is.”
The user has left more than 30 comments in /r/coontown since Wednesday, the day of the Charleston massacre.
One person died Saturday and 16 others were injured in the two separate shootings.
The scene of Saturday's shooting in Philadelphia.
NBC Philadelphia / Via nbcphiladelphia.com
The shooting left a 20-year-old man dead, according to WDIV. Six other men also were struck, including a 46-year-old man who was in critical condition, the Detroit Free Press reported.
The list of victims also included three women, ages 46, 30, and 26. About 400 people were attending the block party, WDIV reported.
Police had not arrested the shooter early Sunday morning.
WDIV / Via clickondetroit.com
The removal of the Confederate flag flying on the South Carolina State Capitol grounds has become a rallying cry for many of those mourning the massacre at a black church in Charleston.
The South Carolina and American flags flying at half-staff behind the Confederate flag erected in front of the State Congress building in Columbia, South Carolina on June 19, 2015.
Mladen Antonov / Via Getty Images
CHARLESTON, South Carolina — Demands that the Confederate flag be removed from the South Carolina State Capitol grounds have grown louder in the aftermath of the massacre of nine people in Charleston's most prominent black church earlier this week. At a vigil for the dead Friday, several speakers demanded the stars and bars be struck for good.
"We will take that flag DOWN," said Rev. Nelson Rivers III of Charity Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston and a top official with civil rights group, the National Action Network. Rivers pounded on his podium to punctuate the point, setting off a round of applause — one of many for anti-Confederate flag rhetoric Friday.
Later that evening, state Rep. Norman "Doug" Brannon, a Republican from Spartanburg, announced on MSNBC that he planned to introduce a bill to take down the flag from the statehouse. Brannon didn't immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.
The issue has taken on renewed resonance in Charleston following the mass shooting at Emanuel AME Church, the nation's oldest black church south of Baltimore. The suspect, 21-year-old Dylann Roof, allegedly made racially inflammatory statements as he gunned down members of the church. When Roof was finally apprehended in North Carolina on Thursday, his car had a Confederate-flag novelty license plate.
In a state that celebrates its heritage as the first state to secede from the Union, many critics have connected the white supremacist ideology that allegedly drove Roof to kill with South Carolina's unapologetic nostalgia for the old Confederacy. The flag was ultimately removed from the capitol's dome in 2000 as part of a political compromise, but it still flies in front of the State Capitol building. The NAACP called for a tourism boycott of the state until the flag was taken down.
The issue has been revisited many times over the years, but with no resolution, and South Carolina has subsequently nursed a reputation as being friendly to Confederate sympathizers.
"There was a horrible fight about taking this flag down," said David Woodard, a political science professor at Clemson University. "It's so terribly contentious here that I don't see anybody [in political office] wanting to touch that thing again."
The meaning of the Confederate flag itself is a subject of considerable and long-running controversy. Its defenders say the flag is a benign symbol of Southern heritage, while its detractors see it as embodying slavery, secession, and white supremacy.
In 2000, an inquiry by the Georgia state government found that displays of the flag had been largely limited to commemorations of Confederate war dead until the 1940s, when it began evolving into "a symbol of resistance to federally enforced integration." According to the report, South Carolina did not raise the Confederate flag above its state capitol until 1962.
Mayor Joe Riley was among hundreds who gathered Friday evening to mourn the nine people allegedly killed by Dylann Roof.
Family members of the victims of a shooting at Emanuel AME Church comfort one another during a memorial service Friday.
David Goldman / AP
Riley — who spoke during a vigil at the TD Arena for the people killed at Emanuel AME Church Wednesday — called for prayer in the wake of the killing and said Charleston is united with broken hearts.
Later, Riley said Roof's ideology is “in the dustpan of failed civilizations.”
