Film Her film
Wake has won numerous awards, including the Outstanding Independent Short Film award in the
Black Reel Awards of 2012 and the Best Short Film at the
BET Urban World Film Festival. It has been screened at many film festivals including the
63rd annual Cannes Film Festival in France, the
New York International Latino Film Festival, and the Montreal International Black Film Festival. Newsome was the first African-American undergraduate to be nominated for the prestigious
Wasserman Award (
Spike Lee having won the award as a graduate student).
Activism 2013 Newsome was arrested in July 2013 at a
sit-in at the office of then
North Carolina House Speaker Thom Tillis while protesting North Carolina's
voter ID law.
2015 On June 27, 2015, she was arrested for taking down the
Confederate battle flag that was displayed on the grounds of the
South Carolina State House in
direct action. Newsome, aged 30, while scaling the pole, was hailed by policemen who told her to get down. She responded: "In the name of Jesus, this flag has to come down. You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today." As she lowered the flag and descended into the arms of awaiting policemen, she announced she was prepared to be arrested. Both Newsome and a man who police said was helping her, James Ian Tyson, were arrested. Onlookers applauded Newsome's efforts as she was handcuffed. As she was led away, she recited the
23rd Psalm from the
Bible. The flag was raised again 45 minutes later. Both activists were charged with defacing monuments on capitol grounds, a
misdemeanor punishable by a fine or a maximum jail sentence of three years, and taken to Richland County Jail. A judge set a $3,000 bond for each.
Todd Rutherford, the minority leader of the state House of Representatives, offered to represent Newsome in court. Colette Gaiter, an associate professor of art and social change at the
University of Delaware, whose writing was republished by
Time magazine, called the act "a significant piece of socially engaged
performance art". After her release, Newsome gave numerous magazine interviews and appeared on talk shows such as
Democracy Now! and
The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore. She also appears in the award-winning 2015 documentary,
Bars4justice. Newsome's actions were criticized by several South Carolina legislators who said that they were in favor of the flag's removal, but illegal actions like Newsome's could hurt their goal to have the flag permanently removed. Calls for the flag's removal had been on the increase since the murder of nine people in the
Charleston church shooting of June 17. A vote on the presence of the flag took place among
South Carolina's House of Representatives on July 9, which resulted in the final removal of the flag the following Friday. The charges against Newsome and Tyson were later dropped.
2016 As a presidential candidate speaking at a
Martin Luther King Day 2016 celebration in Charleston,
Hillary Clinton credited Newsome for taking the matter into her own hands by "shimmying up that flagpole" as a step in the process. "Every year, you've gathered right here and said that that symbol of division and racism went against everything Dr. King stood for. We couldn't celebrate him and the
Confederacy, we had to choose. And South Carolina finally made the right choice." In February 2016, Newsome told
Ebony magazine that she had been motivated in part by her ancestors having been
enslaved and subjected to
racial terrorism in South Carolina.
2017 Newsome has continued to speak on race-related issues such as
affirmative action. She has given interviews to newspapers and magazines such as
The Crisis,
Vox, and
Marie Claire, made television appearances, and given public speeches at colleges and other venues. Following the deadly attack during the
Unite the Right rally in
Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 17, 2017, Newsome's
op-ed piece and video commentary appeared in
The Washington Post. Beginning in 2017, Newsome has worked as an activist for
housing rights.
2021 In an October 13, 2021 podcast discussing
Colin Kaepernick's book,
Abolition for the People: The Movement for a Future Without Policing and Prisons, Newsome argued all
law enforcement, criminal justice and
prisons should be completely abolished.
2023 Newsome expressed solidarity with Palestine during the
Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip and described
Joe Biden as a
dictator. Newsome defended
Saira Rao's argument that
Zionist doctors and nurses pose a threat to Black and Muslim patients. ==Honors and awards==