The rapper Genesis Be says she is getting death threats after using a Confederate flag and noose in her show to protest Mississippi’s “Confederate Heritage Month.”
The artists, whose real name is Genesis Briggs, wore a flag on her body and hung a noose around her neck on a stage show in New York in protest of Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant’s proclamation that April was Confederate Heritage Month. Briggs was raised in the state before moving to New York.
The rapper posted on her Facebook account a picture from her show with the caption that reads “I’ve been receiving threats since this post went semi viral, y’all. They mad or nah.”
“I’m a strong believer in (the power of) words,” she told the New York Daily News. She did not give any details of the threats.
“I don’t want to give these cowards a voice — there’s a reason why these threats were delivered anonymously,” she added.
Genesis Be told Billboard, the proclamation was a “slap in the face not only to my ancestors but everyone’s ancestors who fought against the Confederacy.”
“In my eyes, it is an anti-American heritage,” she said. “The fact that my ancestors were brutalized under these same ideals of putting profit before people was my real motivation.”