Moving photo shows black police officer assisting man in Nazi shirt at KKK rally

A remarkable photo has emerged from a Ku Klux Klan rally in South Carolina showing a black police officer coming to the assistance of an elderly white man wearing Nazi-emblazoned attire.

The moving photograph taken today captures police officer Leroy Smith helping an unidentified man, who is thought to be suffering heat stroke and wearing clothing that appears to be aligned with the National Socialist Movement, a white supremacist group.

The man, whose face looks flushed in the stifling temperatures of a hot Columbia day, wears a black National Socialist Movement t-shirt that carries the Swastika, black army fatigues and black combat boots.

Members of the National Socialist Movement had been part of KKK demonstration protesting the removal of the Confederate flag from the Statehouse grounds, the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

The rally saw KKK, white supremacist groups and opposing members of the New Black Panther Party come together and hurl abuse at one another in front of the South Carolina statehouse.

Media reported Confederate flags being torn up and burned in the face of KKK members who delivered Nazi salutes from the steps of the Statehouse.

There was a heavy police presence and no reported outbreaks of violence.

A police spokesperson confirmed five arrests had been made, and 23 people had required assistance, largely as a result of the searing heat.

The Confederate flag was removed from outside the South Carolina state house on July 10 following outrage over the murder of nine black churchgoers by an alleged white supremacist in Charleston in June.

The flag has long been a contentious issue in American race relations.

Many regard the flag as a bitter symbol of racism and slavery that has no place in modern America, while some in the southern states defend it as a symbol of their heritage.