Historical Brief of Black Lives Matter Movement

  • Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi (center) and Alicia Garza (right)  courtesy of madamenoire.com

    Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi (center) and Alicia Garza (right)
    courtesy of madamenoire.com

    Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded #BlackLivesMatter in 2012, after George Zimmerman, responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted for his crime. Trayvon Martin was posthumously charged for his own death.

  • These women moved the hashtag from social media into the streets, holding conference calls, connecting people across the country striving to end forms of injustice affecting black people.
  • Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi founded #BlackLivesMatter in 2012, after George Zimmerman, responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin, was acquitted for his crime. Trayvon Martin was posthumously charged for his own death.
  • Structure: formed in chapters around the nation.
  • Request:  Asking for us not just to stand in solidarity but scrutinize the ways in which anti-black racism is perpetuated in our communities.
  • BLM is specifically geared toward affirming those Black lives that are particularly marginalized, Black queer and trans folk, disabled folks, Black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum.

“When we deploy ‘All Lives Matter’ as to correct an intervention specifically created to address anti-blackness, we lose the ways in which the state apparatus has built a program of genocide and repression mostly on the back of Black people- beginning with the theft of millions of people for free labor- and then adapted it to control, murder, and profit off of other communities of color and immigrant communities.” -Alicia Garza

Sources: Black Lives Matter Herstory
Black Lives Matter “About”

Compiled by Nikki Pyle

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