South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley will address the public Monday afternoon amid growing calls for the state to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the State House.
Haley, a Republican and the state’s first non-white governor, will deliver remarks at 4 p.m., her press secretary Chaney Adams confirmed in an email.
Local news outlets and a South Carolina politics blog reported Monday morning that Haley will call for the removal of the flag during the 4 p.m. news conference.
Activists and local politicians ratcheted up their calls in recent days to remove the flag in the wake of the murder of nine African-Americans in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina last week allegedly at the hands of avowed white supremacist Dylan Roof.
“We cannot have the Confederate flag waving on the grounds of the state capitol,” NAACP president and South Carolina native Cornell William Brooks said Friday during a press conference. “That symbol has to come down. That symbol must be removed from our state capitol.”
Roof, 21, confessed to law enforcement that he carried out the killing, telling them he wanted to start a “race war.” He had previously posted images online in which he held a confederate flag and a gun.
Haley has previously rebuffed efforts to remove the flag from the grounds of the state legislature and has spoken out in support of the compromise in 2000 that saw the confederate flag removed from the top of the state capital dome and moved to a memorial to Confederate soldiers just a few hundred feet away.
Haley’s office would not preview her address this afternoon, instead telling reporters to stay tuned.