Affirm Black Women Portrait Series: Bree Newsome Bass

“There’s no Black Liberation without Black women.” - Bree Newsome Bass

On April 11, 1961, in the midst of the U.S. Civil Rights movement, a confederate flag was raised above the South Carolina Capitol building. Soon after, seven Black and six white activists - Freedom Riders - began a bus tour of the south to protest segregated bus terminals. The bus was mobbed, bombed, and the Freedom Riders badly beaten when it arrived in Anniston, Alabama. That fall the Interstate Commerce Commission issued regulations prohibiting the segregation of interstate transit terminals.

In a move Time magazine called “a states’-rights rebuff to desegregation” South Carolina lawmakers passed a 1962 resolution demanding the flag continue to fly over the State House. For nearly 40 years the flag remained until a compromise was signed into law - the flag would be flown on a new 30-foot pole in front of the Capital next to a monument honoring Confederate soldiers.

On June 17, 2015 in Charleston, South Carolina white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine Black parishioners during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the oldest Black churches in the U.S. and a center for civil rights organizing.

Ten days later artist and activist Bree Newsome Bass scaled the 30-foot pole at the Capital building and brought down the Confederate flag telling a reporter, “Every day that the flag is up there is an endorsement of hate.”

Of her motivation for this activism Bass said, “I removed the flag not only in defiance of those who enslaved my ancestors in the southern United States, but also in defiance of the oppression that continues against Black people globally. I did it for all the fierce Black women on the front lines of the movement and for all the little Black girls who are watching us. I did it because I am free.”

View the complete Affirm Black Women portrait series here