FAYETTEVILLE -- Bree Newsome read all nine names of the dead, taking her time between each one.
"They were only doing what Christians are called to do when anyone knocks on the doors of a church, which is to invite them in for fellowship and worship," said Newsome, a civil rights activist and filmmaker who spoke Friday at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville.
Each of the nine black men and women she named were slain in a Charleston, S.C., church by a white supremacist gunman, Dylann Roof, who earlier had posed in photographs holding the Confederate battle flag.
Newsome spoke about the importance of activism and described her motivation when, days after the 2015 shooting, she climbed a flagpole to remove the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina statehouse. Police arrested her after she climbed down.
The "indecency" of seeing the same flag fly near the statehouse in the days after the shooting caused her to take action, she said.
"The American and South Carolina flags were lowered to half-staff, yet the Confederate flag remained high and fully unfurled," Newsome said.
Newsome spoke about the long history that explained why the flag flew high.
State lawmakers had earlier approved a measure saying the only way the flag could be lowered was with two-thirds of lawmakers' approval, Newsome said. The flag in 2000 had been removed from the Capitol dome but was allowed to fly on the statehouse lawn at a monument for Confederate soldiers.
Newsome said the flag flying at the statehouse wasn't a remnant from the Civil War, but was raised in the early 1960s "as a symbol of defiance against the civil rights movement and increasing pressure from the federal government to desegregate."
She said the flag "was controversial from the moment it was raised." After Newsome climbed the pole to take down the flag, a South Carolina law was passed requiring the flag be taken down.
Newsome said she had participated in rallies previously and even been arrested, though she had thought of herself more as a community organizer before feeling compelled to work with others in taking down the Confederate flag. She received training before attempting the climb, and she credited another activist standing guard at the base with helping her deal with a tense situation with police.
"I do not believe the flag would have come down if we had not performed the action that we performed," Newsome said.
There was never a single moment when she decided to become an activist, Newsome said, and she said there are other ways for people to make a difference.
"Everyone has it within them to be a leader," Newsome said. She said she has heard from others who are working on various community activism projects, some relating to removing Confederate monuments, after taking down the flag in 2015.
"Folks tell me how they were inspired by that action, so don't underestimate the impact you can have as an individual," Newsome said.
About 60 people heard Newsome talk at the Arkansas Union. She was paid $20,000 to speak at the university, UA spokesman Steve Voorhies said, and her lecture was sponsored by the university's New Student and Family Programs, the Center for Multicultural and Diversity Education and the Office of Student Activities.
NW News on 04/07/2018