I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Saturday, June 19th.

We're so happy to have back with us now, Elizabeth Alexander, the poet and writer, memoirist, scholar, author of 14 books,

and president of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She was last here, some of you may remember,

last year for her New Yorker article, The Trayvon Generation, which just last week won a National

Magazine Award. She has a new major piece in National Geographic called This is How We Can Envision Black Freedom.

Dr. Alexander, we always appreciate when you come on.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Thank you so much, Brian.

It's always great to talk with you.

And your article begins with the story of artist and activist Bree Newsom Bass at the South

Carolina State House in 2015.

Would you remind us of what she did there that day and why you led your piece with her

story?

Yes.

On that day, Bree Newsom Bass climbed the flagpole at the South Carolina State House and took

down the Confederate flag that had flown above the people of that state for a very, very long

time. And she did that 10 days after a white supremacist murdered eight black parishioners

and their pastor at a Emanuel African Methodist

Episcopal Church in Charleston, which, as we know, was grown from a congregation, first organized

by enslaved and free black people in the late 18th century. So in response to that, I don't know how many people

have to be killed to call something a massacre, but in response to that horrific event done

in the name of white supremacy, Brie Newsom took down that flag, knowing that she was going to be arrested,

...