The Amazing Grace of Bree Newsome

By Goldie Taylor, Blue Nation Review

29 June 15

mazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

Just one day after President Obama eulogized a slain pastor and state senator, rousing a packed arena with a centuries-old hymn, it was the amazing grace of a young black woman that gave its lyrics a new and profound meaning.

“For too long, we were blind to the pain that the Confederate flag stirred in too many of our citizens,” the president said Friday, becoming the first Commander-in-Chief to address the issue head-on. “By taking down that flag, we express God’s grace,” he said to deafening applause at the memorial service for Rev. Clementa Pinckney.

Grace, according to Scripture, is a divine promise. Brittany “Bree” Newsome delivered on that promise and, with her courageous act of civil disobedience, told a nation: We cannot wait. Not another day, not another hour.

The emblem was initially raised in 1961 by South Carolina lawmakers, who joined other southern states to re-design state flags nearly 100 years after the Civil War and in defiance of civil rights gains sweeping the nation. Flown by the Klu Klux Klan and other hate groups, it was embraced by a terrorist– a 21-year-old white supremacist who assassinated Rev. Pinckney and eight others victims at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.  His goal was to incite a “race war.” But, as the confessed shooter sat alone in jail unable to make a $1 million bond, the people of Charleston rose not in strife, but in solidarity. The fight to remove the flag from state grounds was reignited.

“It would be a betrayal to everything Rev. Pinckney stood for if we allow ourselves to slip into a comfortable silence again,” Obama said in a live broadcast. “To settle for symbolic gestures without following up with the hard work of more lasting change, that’s how we lose our way again.”

The Confederate flag, he said with nearly 50 members of Congress in the audience, is a symbol of “systemic oppression and racial subjugation.”

President Obama is in the second half of his second term and will, no doubt, never run for public office again. His grace and candor, even in these times, are welcomed yet amazing still. Others, it seems, were unable to muster the same political courage. Still others exploited the white nationalist fervor that surrounds it. Notably, former President Ronald Reagan, in an implicit—if not explicit– nod to the Confederacy, launched his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, extolling the virtues of “states rights.” Reagan sailed into office on platform baked in white populism.

Thirty-five years later, a sitting black president implored an audience to acknowledge and fight racial prejudices that persist not only in private gestures, but those enshrined in societal structures—including housing, employment and the justice system.

“So that we’re guarding against not just racial slurs but we’re also guarding against the subtle impulse to call Johnny back for a job interview but not Jamal,” Obama said.

He began singing a centuries old hymn that has become a mainstay in historically African-American churches. But, if Obama stunned more than 5,500 mourners in singing “Amazing Grace”— the lyrics written by a former slaveholder who went on to become a staunch abolitionist—it was Newsome who shocked the conscience of a nation.

The hashtag #FreeBree has been trending worldwide since she scaled a metal pole, using a climbing harness. She quoted scripture on her way down. “You come at me with hatred, I come to you in the name of God,” Newsome reportedly said.

There was no Congressional delegation present, no booming sermon from a pulpit, no cheering crowds upon her descent, no waiting caravan protected by the Secret Service waiting to ferry her home, no cable news outlets there to capture the iconic moment.

The South Carolina state legislature faces the question now, as we did in Georgia more than two decades ago, whether to permanently remove the Confederate battle flag from statehouse grounds. Imbued with the grace of our ancestors, Newsome said in a statement, “We removed the flag today because we can’t wait any longer. We can’t continue another day. It’s time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality.”

In this hour, I cannot help but to believe that Newsome donned a harness and scaled that pole, not only in the cause of social justice, but also in honor of the martyred.

We should know and call them by name.

Pastor Clementa Pinckney
Cynthia Hurd
Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton
Rev. Daniel Simmons
Tywanza Sanders
Ethel Lance
Susie Jackson
Depayne Middleton Doctor
Myra Thompson

Top Row: Rev Clementa Pinckney, Ethel Lance, Rev. Daniel Simmons, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Myra Thompson Bottom Row: Cynthia Hurd, Tywanza Sanders, Susie Jackson, Depayne Middleton Doctor

Tearfully, some 22 years after I led a coalition of 500 college students to the steps of the Georgia Capitol and burned a Confederate flag, I watched as Newsome quietly, yet powerfully, placed her hands behind her back to be arrested. In doing so, she embodied the very soul of a union not yet perfected. “It must come down!” I said in 1993, not knowing what manner and measure of grace would fill my shoes.

“Are you the Messiah we’ve been expecting, or should we keep looking for?” John the Baptist said from a prison cell. “Are You the Expected One, or shall we look for someone else?” John asked when he heard the works of the Christ.

It seems that, like John, we await a Savior when they stand plentiful in our midst.

“We are the ones we have been waiting for”, then U.S. Senator Barack Obama famously said in 2008. I cannot help but to believe he was talking about Bree Newsome and the many like her who take up the charge of social justice.

We cannot wait. Not another day, not another hour.