Last year, Bree Newsome caught the attention of the nation when she scaled a flagpole in front of the South Carolina statehouse and removed the Confederate flag that had been flying there.
Newsome’s act of defiance happened after Dylann Roof murdered nine black parishioners. (Roof, it later emerged, was a big fan of Confederate symbolism.) Shortly afterward, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley signed a bill removing the flag from in front of the statehouse, where it had flown ever since it was raised in protest of the civil rights movement. “I am very proud to say that it is a great day in South Carolina,” Gov. Haley said at the occasion.
Newsome, a filmmaker, community organizer, and activist, told the Hopkins Hub that she “has always been sensitive to the essential role that art and symbols play in shaping culture and consciousness.” Her lecture, part of the Johns Hopkins’s new series on Race in America, is free and open to the public; it starts at 7 PM in Shriver Hall.
