Niya Kenny, 18, was arrested in a classroom at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina for speaking out when she saw her classmate being mistreated by school resource officer, Ben Fields.

Trigger warning: police violence

A video released Monday shows a school resource officer at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina dragging a seated student from her desk as a teacher and her classmates looked on. The student did not appear to be combative as the officer placed her in a chokehold, flipped her to the ground and violently arrested her.

Bree Newsome, who climbed up the flagpole at the South Carolina state capitol last week to cut down the Confederate battle flag says she has no regrets. Even if it means serving time, Newsome accepts the risk as "part of [her] calling as a freedom fighter".

Despite calls from activists and public officials for the removal of the Confederate flag in South Carolina and across the south, it still flies more than a week after the killing of nine men and women at Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.

Sylvia Johnson, cousin of church shooting victim Pastor Clementa Pinckney says a survivor of the shooting in the Charleston church told her the gunman reloaded five time and reportedly said to a victim, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go."