A group of 15 white men who support the display of the Confederate Battle flag have been indicted as a street gang for allegedly threatening unarmed black people who were attending a child's birthday party in Georgia last summer.
Some 400 people rallied in Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday to demand that the Magnolia State change its flag to erase the Confederate battle emblem from its official banner.
Some 60 prominent Mississippians took out a full-page ad in the state's most widely read newspaper on Sunday to demand that the Confederate battle emblem be removed from the Magnolia State's flag.
South Carolina has removed the Confederate battle flag from its statehouse grounds and Mississippi continues to debate the use of the emblem on its banner, but Kentucky decided on Wednesday not to remove a statue of Jefferson Davis from its Capitol.
Close to a month after the Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting on June 17, the debate over the South's charged symbolism has moved to Mississippi, the only state whose flag still incorporates the Confederate battle emblem.
Walmart has apologized for fulfilling a customer's request to bake a cake bearing the flag of the Islamic State militant group, also referred to as ISIS, a terror organization that controls large swaths of territory across Syria and Iraq.
The Republican speaker of Mississippi's House of Representatives on Monday called for the Confederate battle emblem to be removed from the Magnolia State's flag.
The Confederate battle flag is once again at the heart of a free-speech dispute, this time because the Texas division of the Sons of Confederate Veterans is fighting a decision by the state's Department of Motor Vehicles to reject a specialty license plate featuring the banner.
