Flagpole climb turns spotlight on Charlotte activist Bree Newsome

Bree Newsome’s Saturday morning climb up a Columbia flagpole turned the 30-year-old Charlotte activist into a national celebrity in a matter of hours.

Newsome, whose full name is Brittany Ann Byuarim Newsome, ascended the pole bearing the South’s most controversial Confederate flag around 5:30 a.m. Saturday. As law officers called for her to come down, she calmly removed the flag, climbed down and was led off in cuffs, reciting “The Lord is my shepherd” as bystanders chanted and cheered.

State employees quickly returned the flag to its post. But images of Newsome’s raid captivated the nation.

By midday Saturday, #FreeBree was the nation’s top-trending hashtag on Twitter. Vanity Fair had posted an admiring article and Ava DuVernay, director of the movie “Selma,” called Newsome “a black superhero.” NAACP leaders in Raleigh and Baltimore issued statements of support, and a crowdfunding page to raise bail brought in more than $66,000.

Many lauded her for single-handedly taking down a flag that many see as a symbol of white supremacy after the slayings June 17 of nine African Americans by a white supremacist at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Her act came as the legislature is considering removing the flag from its position on the State House grounds. Gov. Nikki Haley last week called for its removal.

“This act was not just in defiance to the massacre at Mother Emanuel, but in defiance to the systematic terrorism and oppression black bodies have suffered for centuries in this country,” said a statement on the Ignite NC website. “The fact that the flag could not be removed by the governor alone as it is being protected by congressional super majority procedures illustrates how endemic white supremacy is within our structure.”

Newsome is listed as western field director for the group, which works to mobilize young people for change.

Another Charlotte activist

She was accompanied by another Charlotte activist, James Ian Tyson, 30, who stood at the base of the flagpole. Both were arrested by the S.C. Bureau of Protective Services at about 6:15 a.m. They were charged with defacing state property, a misdemeanor that carries penalties of up to three years in prison or a fine of up to $5,000 or both. Both were released on $3,000 bond, with a trial date set for July 27.

Tyson was active in the Rainforest Action Network and Occupy Charlotte during the buildup to the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. He made news at the time when he was arrested on a traffic charge and police tried to hold him for the duration of the convention, saying his name was on a terrorist watch list.

But it was Newsome who was hailed Saturday as a symbol of today’s racial justice movement.

Although a news release about her arrest listed her as a Raleigh resident, all of her own material focuses on Charlotte.

“She is an organizer and leader in the Charlotte community, organizing primarily around the issue of police brutality,” the Ignite NC website says, citing her work demanding justice in the killing of Jonathan Ferrell, an African American, by a white Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officer.

‘Exposed to these issues’

Earlier this month, the Levine Museum of the New South posted an interview with Newsome in its “New South Dialogue” series. She describes herself as the daughter of educators. Her father is former Shaw University president Clarence G. Newsome, and Bree Newsome told the museum interviewer that her mother worked with students of color, children of poverty and those who don’t speak English at home.

“I was exposed to these issues when I was a child, and in retrospect I suppose it influenced me more deeply than I realized at the time,” she said in that interview. “While I always cared about these issues, I didn’t truly become an activist until two years ago. It was the attack on voting rights in North Carolina that ‘activated’ me and I moved from being a sideline supporter to an activist.”

Newsome was arrested in 2013 during protest against voter suppression at the State Capitol. She and five others occupied the office of then-House speaker Thom Tillis, who is now a U.S. senator.

Newsome represents a new generation of activists working with groups that aren’t household names. She lists among her affiliations Students and Youth United for Progress in NC (StAY UP NC), Tribe CLT and People’s Power Assemblies.

The Levine Museum interview also lists a background in the arts, including a degree in film and television from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and a 2011 stint as artist-in-residence at Saatchi & Saatchi, a New York communications and advertising company. It says she performs with the Charlotte-based funk band Powerhouse.

S.C. State Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Richland, a Columbia attorney, is representing Newsome. After the bond hearing, Rutherford said Newsome “maintains her innocence on the charge.” Someone called him and asked him to represent Newsome, he said.

Columbia attorney Mark Schnee is representing Tyson, who he says was standing nearby at the time of the flag’s removal and did not climb the pole or touch the flag. Schnee said he was contacted by the activist group several days ago and asked about laws and rules regarding protests.

Flag back up

At about 7:45 a.m., after the two were taken away, two African-American state employees raised a new flag.

Tamika Lewis, part of the “concerned citizens” group that supported the action, said she had hoped it would prompt state leaders to keep the flag down. Lewis said her group consists of North and South Carolina residents.

“We did not expect that it would be raised again,” Lewis said, noting that state leaders “should just leave it down. They were having this hard decision whether or not to take it down. A lot of them are concerned about their political value and their political careers and all worried about losing their constituencies and their voters if they vote for the removal of this flag.

“So we ... took it upon ourselves to do the hard part and take it down. All they had to do was keep it down.”

Witnesses said the incident might hurt efforts to remove the flag permanently. The Confederate flag, raised more than 50 years ago atop the S.C. State House, was taken off the dome as part of a compromise in 2000. But its placement on the State House grounds, directly in front of the capitol, has continued to cause criticism.

“I’m glad to see it down,” said Willie Hampton, an African-American who said he saw the flag being removed. “But now, this is going to bring a bunch of riff raff about the flag.”

Sammy Fretwell and Sarah Ellis of The State Newspaper and Anne Blythe of the News & Observer contributed

This story was originally published June 27, 2015 at 10:15 AM with the headline "Flagpole climb turns spotlight on Charlotte activist Bree Newsome."