Some 400 people rallied in Jackson, Mississippi, on Sunday to demand that the Magnolia State change its flag to erase the Confederate battle emblem from its official banner.

Civil-rights leader Myrlie Evers-Williams, Mississippi-born rapper David Banner and prominent South Carolina state Rep. Jenny Horne all attended the demonstration, one of several initiatives urging an update of the state flag that Mississippi voters had sustained in a 2001 referendum, the Associated Press reported.

But in the aftermath of this year's racially motivated Charleston, South Carolina, church shooting, retaining the Confederate battle flag in the canton of the state emblem hurts all Mississippians, Horne said.

"It is a new South," he said. "The economic development opportunities that Mississippi is missing out on -- you don't even know it, but it's costing all citizens jobs."

The protest follows an earlier appeal by 60 prominent Mississippians who in August had taken out a full-page ad in the state's most widely read newspaper to urge action on the flag issue, according to USA Today. In a letter signed by author John Grisham, actor Morgan Freeman and quarterback Archie Manning, among others, they said it was "time for Mississippi to fly a flag for all its people."

Two months earlier, meanwhile, the speaker of Mississippi's House of Representatives had also called for the removal of the Confederate battle emblem, the AP recalled.

"We must always remember our past, but that does not mean we must let it define us," Philip Gunn had noted. "As a Christian, I believe our state's flag has become a point of offense that needs to be removed. We need to begin having conversations about changing Mississippi's flag."

Nevertheless, Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant has said he does not expect the legislature to override the results of the 2001 referendum but that the issue could once again be put before voters. At Sunday's rally, meanwhile, three supporters of the current flag flew large banners with various Confederate emblems as they watched the demonstration from a distance.