On Saturday morning, a North Carolina woman climbed the flagpole outside the South Carolina statehouse and temporarily removed the Confederate flag flying there.

“We removed the flag today because we can’t wait any longer,” Bree Newsome said in a press release. “We can’t continue like this another day. It’s time for a new chapter where we are sincere about dismantling white supremacy and building toward true racial justice and equality.”

Newsome’s identity was confirmed to the New York Daily News by organizer Tamika Lewis. One other activist, James Tyson, who had stood at the bottom of the 30-foot pole as Newsome climbed, was arrested.

Police asked Newsome, who was wearing climbing gear, to come down, as she was about half-way up the pole, the Charleston Post Courier reports. Newsome refused, continued to climb, and unhooked the flag.

When she alighted, she was arrested, and the flag was replaced within an hour. Newsome and Tyson face charges of defacing a monument.

“We didn’t see it fit to have the flag stand erect while the people who were massacred were laid to rest under it,” Lewis told the Daily News.

Image via Adam Anderson. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.