Why would Brittany "Bree" Newsome, daughter of the Reverend Dr. Clarence G. Newsome, break the law and tear down a confederate flag from its flagpole if she didn't intend to cause a scene?

On Friday, South Carolina State Troopers cranked the confederate flag down the same 30-foot pole Newsome scaled on June 27, folded it, rolled it up, and marched away.

Newsome said she decided not to attend the “historic” flag removal ceremony on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbia, S.C. because “my presence would only be a distraction."

Newsome’s decision must have been difficult, considering the woman’s lifelong record of craving for attention.

Bree’s activism has been all about drawing attention to herself in the guise of a cause that she describes as combating "white supremacist ideology and end the legacy of hate." 

This "legacy of hate" has been good to Newsome and her family. Dr. Newsome was a longtime Dean of Howard University’s School of Divinity, a faculty member at Duke University, a past president of Shaw University and currently the president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Lynne Newsome, Bree’s mother, is a 30-year veteran educator and consultant on a variety of projects aimed at accelerating minority student achievement.

Newsome is hardly a poster woman for oppressed blacks. In 2004, YM magazine named her "one of the 20 coolest teens in America. The same year the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded the aspiring filmmaker a $40,000 scholarship to New York University’s prestigious Tisch School of the Arts. Both YM and NATAS, at the time, were owned and managed by white people. Newsome's good fortune and privileged upbringing apparently wasn’t enough to secure the kind of fame she coveted. 

In 2012, after participating in a Martha Vineyard’s African-American Film Fest, Newsome told an interviewer she “wouldn’t mind winning the most Oscars, Emmys, Tonys and Grammys of anyone in the world.” The wannabe director said she wanted to work in the entertainment field professionally. Nowhere in the online Q & A does Newsome mention a desire to save poor, black people from their white oppressors.

In 2014, during a panel discussion at Spelman College, Newsome all but admitted a career in activism beats trying to work her way up the ladder of success.

For as long as I can remember, I just became aware that simply being myself was an act of defiance. The space that exists for many of us, as a young black girl, is so extremely limited so that you really can’t go very far without being an activist, without being in defiance of something.

With past projects in film and music falling flat, including a short horror flick about a daughter who murders her domineering father, Newsome lent her limp talents to the black grievance industry. 

In 2013, as a participant in the Moral Monday movement in North Carolina, Newsome staged a sit-in at House Speaker Thom Tillis' office along with other activists. The group claimed requiring voters to show an ID before casting a ballot was racist.

Newsome's family ties to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who also considers voter ID laws discriminatory, no doubt influenced Newsome to choose the lucrative and ego boosting work of "defiant" activism. 

Dr. Newsome shared the story of his family's close relationship with Lynch at a Senate Judiciary hearing in January 2015. Speaking on behalf of Obama’s nominee to head the Department of Justice, Bree's father addressed the committee:

It is my pleasure and honor to appear before you to support the nomination of Attorney Loretta Elizabeth Lynch for the position of United States Attorney General.

I have known Loretta virtually all of her life. Our family relationships cover a period of 40 or more years. Her family has been associated with several branches of my family by way of the Baptist Church connection and the network of educators in the great state of North Carolina. 

Her brother continues in that tradition of leadership even now. Her father and I have been ministerial colleagues since the 1970s.  It was my privilege to teach her brother during the years that I served on the Duke Divinity School faculty.  I have been able to maintain a warm personal association with her mother, an esteemed church leader and educator in her own right, for decades.

With strong connections to race-based operatives like Loretta Lynch and unable to hack it in the cut-throat business of moviemaking, Newsome appears to have decided  to make a name for herself on the backs of the black murder victims in Charleston. That tragedy, along with the fabricated Confederate flag controversy, was evidenlty too good to pass up for the “defiant” flag-snatcher. 

Fresh off a gig in West Baltimore, Newsome headed to Charleston where she said she was “shaken.” Before the curtain rose in Columbia, South Carolina, Newsome and 10 other activists rehearsed the daring pole-climbing stunt for two days in her hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. Newsome’s opening act on June 27 was as close to an Oscar performance as the poseur has achieved so far.

The publicity and subsequent arrest led to media appearances, recognition, and big bucks. Newsome has been active in the Black Lives Matter movement since Ferguson but the Confederate flag snatch raised nearly $100,000 in less than 24 hours, ostensibly to bail her out of jail. The director of the movie Selma lauded her as a ‘superhero” while the president of the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP compared her to Rosa Parks. She has appeared on most major network and cable media shows. As a member of the scripted, manufactured, black elite stirring up the masses, Newsome is a pathetic and opportunistic representative of her “people.”