A newly formed Southern heritage association plans to hold a rally Sept. 5 at the Minnesota Capitol in support of the Confederate battle flag.

A permit application by the group Minnesota 10,000 for Southern Heritage was approved Wednesday. It says about 25 people will rally from 9 to 10 a.m. on the Saturday before Labor Day in the upper mall in front of the Capitol in St. Paul.

Rally organizer B.C. Johnson said he is an African-American who moved to Minnesota from South Carolina two years ago. He said the group came together in recent weeks through Facebook conversations about Southern heritage and the backlash against the Confederate flag in his home state after the June massacre of nine black parishioners at a Charleston church.

Dylann Roof, the white 21-year-old gunman accused in those killings, posted photos of himself posing with the Confederate flag. Johnson said he doesn't want the actions of people like Roof to define a flag that he says represents the historic fight of Southerners against a "tyrannical and hypocritical government."

150 Years Later, Two States Are Still Fighting Over the Battle of Gettysburg

Virginia wants a captured Confederate flag back. Minnesota's governor says "it would be a sacrilege to return it to them."
BY BRIAN RESNICK

June 28, 2013 Next week marks the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, but it appears, somehow, there is still some bad blood between a pair of Northern and Southern states.

Here's the controversy: The Minnesota Historical Society has a Confederate flag in its possession, captured from a Virginia regiment during the last day of the battle. For the sake of the anniversary, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell asked Minnesota to loan it to them (McDonnell is the governor who had declared April 2010 "Confederate History Month" at the behest of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, but then apologized for not mentioning slavery in the proclamation.) Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton's response to the request was simple: No way.