North Carolina NAACP president compares Bree Newsome to Rosa Parks
theGrio REPORT - Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, compared Bree Newsome, the woman who took down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse, to Rosa Parks.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II, president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP, compared Bree Newsome, the woman who took down the Confederate flag at the South Carolina statehouse, to Rosa Parks.
In a statement filled with praise, Barber called Newsome a “committed, trained, non-violent messenger of the truth.”
“[Newsome] stands in a long tradition … Fannie Lou Hamer, Rosa Parks, and more recently hundreds of protesters in Moral Monday … were all considered, at first, criminals for their acts of conscience,” he said. “We stand in solidarity with her, and the deep commitment which she has to justice, love, and true inter-racial community. We stand with her as she is our family.”
The Moral Monday movement is a series of nonviolent civil disobediences in response to South Carolina’s cuts to social programs, restrictions on abortion rights, proposed voting rights changes and mishandling of other issues.
Newsome had a history of protest long before she scaled the flag pole. She was one of six arrested in a protest against voter ID laws and participated in a sit-in at the statehouse. But when she took to the flagpole in full climbing gear, she truly captured the nation’s attention.
“The flag is vulgar. Its removal is not only a small step, but an important symbolic one. Its vulgarity and representation of the racist, immoral defense of all slavery and Jim Crow not only should come down, but should have never been put up,” Barber wrote.
