Bree Newsome tells Larry Wilmore about the moment she removed the Confederate flag

Activist Bree Newsome made her late-night debut on Thursday’s edition of The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore to discuss her recent arrest for removing the Confederate flag from in front of the state capital building in Columbia, South Carolina.

“It was about 10 of us who pulled the whole thing together, including folks who were down in South Carolina who could actually go down there and look at the scene,” Newsome told Wilmore as the pair drank mint juleps, a reference to a joke Newsome made on Twitter.

Newsome said that while was had some worries about executing the act of protest, the feeling of accomplishment once she did remove the flag was very strong.

“It was just this really amazing feeling of ‘Mission accomplished,'” she said. “One of the hardest points I was concerned about was getting 15 feet up the pole. I knew once I got that far up I was pretty much clear to make it up there. […] Once I got up there and grabbed it, I was like, ‘Yes! Take me to jail.'”

Last week, Newsome was hailed as a hero on social media by the likes of Michael Moore and Ava DuVernay, who wrote on Twitter that Newsome was a “a black superhero I admire.” Wilmore didn’t mention DuVernay by name during his interview with Newsome, but did come up with superhero names for his guest. Among them: Soul Pole, Queen Bree and Bree Newsome.

•Ava DuVernay tweets support for Bree Newsome, ‘a black superhero I admire’