KINGSTON, RI – January 25, 2021 – Bree Newsome, the artist who attracted national attention in 2015 by climbing the flagpole in front of the South Carolina Capitol and removing a Confederate battle flag, will be the speaker at the University of Rhode Celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. on the island on February 2.
The online presentation, from 7 pm to 8:30 pm, is free and open to URI students, staff, teachers and alumni.
The flag was originally flown in 1961 as a racist statement of opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and protests against lunch that were taking place at the time. The massacre of nine black parishioners by a white supremacist at the Emanuel AME Zion Church in Charleston has reignited controversy over the continued endorsement of a hate symbol by South Carolina. Newsome’s defying act against white supremacist culture has been captured in photos , works of art and films and became a symbol of women’s resistance and empowerment.
According to his website, his roots as an artist and activist were planted early. His father served as dean of Howard University’s Divinity School and president of Shaw University and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Her mother spent her career as an educator addressing the performance gap and disparities in education.
In 2011, as a resident artist at Saatchi & Saatchi, a communications and advertising agency in New York, Bree Newsome marched with Occupy Wall Street. In 2013, she was briefly involved in the Moral Monday movement organized by Rev. William Barber, III and the NAACP North Carolina state chapter. Newsome offered to be arrested as part of a demonstration at the North Carolina State House, protesting legislation aimed at depriving black voters. The legislation was later repealed by the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals of the United States, which concluded that North Carolina had “targeted[ed] African Americans with almost surgical precision. “
Much of Newsome’s activism has focused on incidents of young black people being killed unjustly and issues related to structural racism. She traveled with a group of young North Carolina activists to Florida during Dream Defenders’ occupation of the government headquarters in 2013 as a protest against the death of Trayvon Martin. She also participated in a 17-kilometer march in 2014 from Wal-Mart in Beavercreek, Ohio, where John Crawford was killed by the police, until the court in Xenia, Ohio, demanding the release of the images showing the murder.
Newsome’s interest in the arts was fostered early in her life, and she has been promising ever since. At 7, she learned to play the piano and wrote her first piece of music. Two years later, she wrote her first play. At 18, Bree won a $ 40,000 grant from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences as part of a short film competition.
She studied cinema at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. His last year short film, “Wake”, won several awards and was a finalist for the prestigious Wasserman Award, whose previous winners include Spike Lee.
MUSIC, Brothers in a New Direction (BOND); Black Student Union (BSU), Powerful Independent Notoriously Knowledgeable Women (PINK) and Uhuru Sasa planned the event in collaboration with the Multicultural Students Services Center.