In the wake of the 2015 Charleston, South Carolina church shooting, in which nine black parishioners of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church were killed by Confederacy admirer and white supremacist Dylann Roof, there were renewed calls for Southern states to cease using the Confederate battle flag in official capacities. This extended to increased criticism of Mississippi's state flag. All eight public universities in Mississippi, along with "several cities and counties", including Biloxi, later refused to fly the state flag until the emblem is removed. The flag was excluded from state-flag displays in New Jersey, Oregon, and Philadelphia that included the flags of the other 49 states.