Black Lives Matter is an activist movement that was formed to campaign against racial injustice and what its members consider police brutality against African Americans. Three Black activists began the movement on social media in July 2013. They did so after George Zimmerman, a white neighborhood-watch volunteer, was acquitted (found not guilty) of murdering Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teenager, during a struggle in Sanford, Florida.
Black Lives Matter, which does not center on a single visible leader, has encouraged the leadership of all of its members. It is a decentralized movement with self-governing chapters around the United States. Most of the chapters are affiliated with the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, a nonprofit organization. The movement has staged demonstrations around the world. It has attracted attention to the stark differences in how police are perceived in many Black and white communities.
Black Lives Matter was cofounded by Alicia Garza, an activist with the National Domestic Workers Alliance in Oakland, California; Patrisse Cullors, a California activist who founded the prison reform organization Dignity & Power Now; and Opal Tometi, a New York-based immigration activist. As a reaction to George Zimmerman’s acquittal, the three women popularized the hashtag #blacklivesmatter on the social networking website Twitter (now called X). A hashtag is a word or phrase preceded by the symbol #. It can be used to categorize or identify posts (messages) about a certain topic on a social media platform.
The hashtag and movement gained momentum and became a rallying cry in August 2014, after Black teenager Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer during a confrontation in Ferguson, Missouri. Since then, Black Lives Matter has gained attention for protesting the deaths of other unarmed African Americans who have died at the hands of police officers. The death of George Floyd in the custody of Minneapolis police officers in May 2020 caused widespread outrage and led to weeks of protests around the country.
Black Lives Matter members have promoted plans for criminal justice programs that call for police officers to wear body cameras; for national use-of-force standards; for ending policing of minor offenses, including drug possession; for reducing police budgets to fund social programs; and for better collection of data on police shootings, among other recommendations.
