South Carolina: five arrested as rallies clash
At least five people were arrested on Saturday as white-supremacist and African-American groups faced each other outside the South Carolina State House, the authorities said.
.jpg)
Last week the Confederate battle flag was removed from the state house in South Carolina after a half-century.
.jpg)
Beginning at noon, a Florida-based group called Black Educators for Justice demonstrated on the north side of the capitol but tensions rose when a group of about 50 white supremacists, many carrying Confederate flags and one a Nazi flag, marched toward the south steps of the capitol.
.jpg)
What is the Confederate flag?
The Confederate flag is associated with the army of the southern states in the American civil war in the 1860s. The southern states wanted to secede from the rest of the US and stop the abolition of black slavery.
After the war, it was used to commemorate fallen soldiers, but in the late 1940s was adopted by the segregationist Dixiecrat party, with the racist Ku Klux Klan also flying it.
.jpg)
Critics of the flag say it is a symbol of white supremacy, slavery and segregation. In California, there is a ban on the state government displaying it.