Activist Bree Newsome, who famously climbed the South Carolina capitol flagpole to remove its Confederate flag in 2015, had been set to speak at the school on Wednesday night. The event was titled, “Tearing Hatred from the Sky.”
Numerous demonstrators gathered at the venue in the days leading up to her lecture, to protest against her. Members of the the South Carolina Secessionist Party, who were on hand, repeatedly called for the event to be canceled — and even relocated their weekly Confederate flag-flying rally from their normal location to the College of Charleston, the Courier reports.
The protesters were met with several counter-demonstrations, from members of the BLM movement, Southerners on New Ground, Indivisible Charleston and Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ).
Before Newsome’s lecture on Wednesday, a man was spotted standing outside the theatre — proudly waving a Confederate flag.
D’Baha, whose legal name is Muhiyidin Elamin Moye, apparently became enraged by the display and made his move just as the television cameras were rolling.
“Um, you can see what’s happening right now. It looks like both sides of the crowd are fighting one another,” a frightened WCSC reporter can be heard saying, moments after Moye leaps over a line of police tape and tries to grab the man’s flag in mid-air.
“Police are arresting this guy, right now,” she adds.
Members of the SURJ group in Charleston have been raising money online for Moye’s bail. As of early Thursday, they had already raised more than $3,500.
This article was originally published in the New York Post.