By Therese Apel

JACKSON, Miss. (Reuters) - The Sons of Confederate Veterans asked the U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday to look into a car crash in Mississippi that killed an outspoken African-American defender of the Confederate flag.

Anthony Hervey, 49, author of "Why I Wave the Confederate Flag: Written by a Black Man," was killed on Sunday when the Ford Explorer he was driving to his home in Oxford, Mississippi, from a Confederate flag rally left the road and overturned.

The passenger in the car with him told local media there was a silver car occupied by several African-American men chasing them and may have run them off the road.

Hervey often sat at the Confederate memorial on the Oxford town square, sometimes wearing a Confederate uniform and waving a battle flag. He addressed crowds all over the United States and in Europe.

"We are deeply saddened by the death of a friend, and we ask that the Justice Department immediately join in this investigation," said Charles Kelly Barrow, commander-in-chief of the SCV, formed in 1896 and open to male descendants of Confederate soldiers. "Mr. Hervey was likely killed because of his color and his beliefs."

The Mississippi Highway Patrol is investigating the crash.

Barrow also challenged the NAACP civil rights group, President Barack Obama and other political leaders to condemn the destruction of Confederate symbols.

"Their support of this cultural cleansing has created a very divisive atmosphere in the South and by their silence they have created the impression that they support these hostile and destructive actions," Barrow said. "This is not the road to brotherhood and understanding."

The flag's symbolism is the focus of intense debate across the South following the massacre of nine blacks in a South Carolina church last month.

The white suspect in the Charleston church shootings had posed with the flag in photos posted on a website.

Supporters of the flag insist it is an honorable image of regional pride that is flown out of respect for Southern soldiers who died on the losing side in the 1861-65 Civil War. Others see it as a divisive and hateful symbol of the South's pro-slavery legacy.

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In South Carolina, lawmakers moved to take the flag down from the State House grounds in Columbia, and similar steps have been taken in Alabama and scores of municipalities since the June 17 massacre.





(Reporting by Therese Apel; Editing by Karen Brooks and Eric Beech)