O'Malley Urges Removal of Confederate Flag After Charleston Shooting
The South Carolina and US flags are seen flying at half-staff behind the Confederate flag erected in front of the State Congress building in Columbia, South Carolina on June 19, 2015. Police captured the white suspect in a gun massacre at one of the oldest black churches in Charleston in the United States, the latest deadly assault to feed simmering racial tensions. Police detained 21-year-old Dylann Roof, shown wearing the flags of defunct white supremacist regimes in pictures taken from social media, after nine churchgoers were shot dead during bible study on Wednesday.
Photographer: Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty ImagesDemocrat Martin O'Malley on Sunday became the first presidential candidate to call unequivocally for South Carolina to take down its Confederate battle flag after a 21-year old white man shot and killed nine people at a historic black church in Charleston.
"What a terribly jarring and callous sight then—in the wake of this racist massacre—to see the American flag at half staff, while above it at full staff over the state Capitol of South Carolina flew a Confederate flag," O'Malley said in a speech Sunday to the U.S. Conference of Mayors in San Francisco, according to a transcript provided by his campaign. "If the families of Charleston can forgive, can let go of their anger, is it really too much to ask the state government officials of South Carolina to retire the Confederate flag to a museum? America must do better."