Confederate flag controversy: Alabama governor orders flag removal at Capitol

Alabama's governor has ordered Confederate flags to be taken down from the grounds of the state Capitol in Montgomery, in the latest move to banish the divisive banner from state capitals, store shelves, licence plates and monuments.

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Gov. Robert Bentley issued the order Wednesday morning, one week after police say a white man killed nine black church members in Charleston, S.C., in a racially motived attack.

For the past two decades, Alabama has displayed four Confederate flags around a large monument to Confederate soldiers outside the Alabama Capitol. On Wednesday, they were all gone.

Bentley spokeswoman Jennifer Ardis tells The Associated Press that Bentley did not want the presence of the Confederate symbols to be "a distraction." She said there was no law prohibiting the removal of the flags by executive order.

Earlier this week, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley declared the Confederate flag be removed from the statehouse grounds as she acknowledged that its use as a symbol of hatred by Charleston church shooting suspect Dylann Storm Roof has made it too divisive for the state to display in such a public space.

Roof, 21, appeared in photos online waving Confederate flags and burning or desecrating U.S. flags, and purportedly wrote of fomenting racial violence. Survivors told police he hurled racial insults during last Wednesday's attack.