The Confederate flag and America’s battle over race
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2021
⏱️ 15 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In June 2015 an American anti-racist activist climbed a flagpole on the South Carolina state house grounds to take down the Confederate flag. The protest followed the killing of 9 black people at a historic Charleston church by a white supremacist who was pictured holding the flag. The Confederate flag was the battle flag of the troops who fought to retain slavery during America’s civil war. For African Americans the flag is a symbol of slavery, segregation and black subordination. Bree Newsome Bass talks to Farhana Haider about her act of protest.
Bree Newsome taking down the Confederate flag at the State House in Columbia, SC, on Saturday 27th June 2015 . She was arrested for her action. (Photo by Adam Anderson / Reuters)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
| 0:06.8 | searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the |
| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
| 0:16.0 | Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming. |
| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. Hello and thank you for downloading the Witness History Podcast from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:40.8 | I'm Frahana Hither and today we go back to June 2015 when an American anti-racist |
| 0:47.8 | activist climbed a flagpole on the grounds of South Carolina State House to take down the Confederate flag, |
| 0:55.0 | a divisive symbol of America's racist history. |
| 0:58.5 | Her act of protests followed the killing of nine black churchgoers by a white supremacist. |
| 1:05.0 | The gunman had been sitting inside this historic African American church in Charleston |
| 1:11.0 | for an hour before standing up and opening fire. |
| 1:15.5 | It remains for me one of the most vivid memories of my life when I learned |
| 1:21.4 | about what had happened in Charleston. |
| 1:23.6 | And I remember calling my sister, |
| 1:27.0 | and I was just in tears. |
| 1:28.5 | It was so devastating. |
| 1:30.5 | It felt like we were, I don't want to say back in the 1960s but it just brought |
| 1:37.7 | the realization or the reality of that violence to the present that's Breen Newsom Bass, an African-American rights activist who was born and raised in South Carolina. |
| 1:48.1 | The attack on the church in Charleston, South Carolina on June the 17th, 2015, not only opened up historic wounds, it also brought |
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