NAACP president says Confederate flag must come down after church killings

WASHINGTON — NAACP President Cornell Brooks said on Friday the Confederate flag must come down following the slayings of nine African-Americans in a Charleston, South Carolina, by a white man who reportedly told police he wanted to incite a race war.

“We cannot have the confederate flag waving in the state capital,” Brooks, head of the oldest civil rights organization in the United States, said at an appearance in Charleston.

The Confederate battle flag, a vestige of the Civil War, continues to fly over state grounds.