Activist Brittany “Bree” Newsome, labeled a “hero” and an “inspiration” by many after she scaled a 30-foot flagpole at the South Carolina State House grounds and removed the Confederate flag this past June, will speak and answer questions at the St. Bede Episcopal Chapel, 1150 Stanford Drive, on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus on Wednesday, September 9, starting at 8 p.m.

Fellow activist James Tyson, who waited at the flagpole’s base and helped Newsome out of her climbing gear once she came down, will also speak at the forum. Titled “Courage to Be: Bringing Down the Flag,” it is the inaugural Master Series Lecture presented by the United Wesley Foundation of Miami and hosted by Pastor Peter E. Matthews.

Newsome and Tyson were arrested for their actions, which helped spur the removal of the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol and came in the wake of the murders of nine worshipers at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Dylann Roof, the man charged in the killings, had posed with a Confederate  flag in pictures and expressed white supremacist views.

For more information about the forum, please call 305-284-1920.