2013: Black Lives Matter
The brutal history of slavery and systemic racism formed the framework for the events that came to dominate the media throughout the second decade of the twenty-first century.
These events - the mass incarceration of black men, police profiling, and the murders of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Breonna Taylor, the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the public death of George Floyd, and the countless other names and deaths within African American communities - called white attention to a reality Black people knew all too well..
Mindy Thompson Fullilove (2016), a psychiatrist who works in urban policy and health, notes that this long history of slavery and systemic racism in the United States has caused a condition she called “root shock” in African Americans. Root shock, she argues, is akin to someone experiencing a life-threatening physical trauma that leaves communities devoid of basic resources required to survive (Thompson Fullilove, 2016, p. 11-12). When one studies the injustices against African Americans over the past four hundred years, this theory begins to make sense: slavery, Jim Crow, Plessy vs Ferguson, legal segregation, eugenics-based social policies, redlining, exclusion from the GI Bill, urban renewal, blockbusting, contract housing, denial of civil rights, white flight, political assassinations, racist drug laws and police brutality, racist zoning and development laws, displacement, mass incarceration, and the subprime mortgage crisis.
A Black Lives Matter die-in over rail tracks, protesting alleged police brutality in Saint Paul, Minnesota (September 20, 2015).
Source: Wikipedia
The slogan Black Lives Matter became a way to draw attention to ongoing violence against Black people.
After George Zimmerman shot and killed African American teen Trayvon Martin and was then acquitted for the murder in 2013, the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter began circulating on social media as a way to signal solidarity against the perceived racially motivated acquittal. Protesting discriminatory policing tactics and racist prejudice among law enforcement, the movement spread across the internet and across cities demanding fair treatment and re-evaluation of the criminal justice’s approach to race (Bonilla-Silva, 2018, p. 36; Cobb, 2016).
Black Lives Matter frequently used signage.
Source: Wikipedia
The movement gained further momentum through the second decade of the twenty-first century with the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and the failure of the grand jury to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the murder.
With the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd in 2020, the hashtag moved from the sidelines of social media into the mainstream with protests erupting across cities in the United States and abroad.
Even publicly traded corporations released statements of support for the Black Lives Matter Movement (BLM), including Ben & Jerry’s, Nickelodeon, the television program Sesame Street, and many others (Wortham, 2020). Further, more and more public figures such as Star Wars’s John Boyega gave speeches at BLM protests or attended these demonstrations to show support; Taylor Swift of musical renown responded directly to a tweet by then President Donald that threatened peaceful BLM protesters, “accusing him of threatening violence after years of ‘stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism” (Wortham, 2020).
In fact, in the midst of several months of protests following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, statistics revealed that on June 6, 2020 alone nearly a half million people marched in nearly 550 cities within the United States (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel, 2020). Several polls and analytics firms found that
about 15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others [during the summer of 2020]. These figures would make the recent protests the largest movement in the country’s history, according to interviews with scholars and crowd-counting experts. (Buchanan, Bui, and Patel, 2020).
Responding to the growth of the BLM movement from 2013 to 2020, Alicia Garza (who originally coined the phrase “Black Lives Matter”) reflected that “Seven years ago, we were treated like we were too radical, too out of bounds of what is possible, and now, countless lives later, it’s finally seen as relevant” (Wortham, 2020).
Besides the movement's enduring influence and presence, the Black Lives Matter Movement led to the creation of a BLM plaza in D.C. along with countless local monuments and memorials that draw attention to racial inequity and injustice.
In June 2020, Mayor Bowser–the mayor of the District of Columbia–created a two-block stretch of 16th Street NW, shifting the thoroughfare to a pedestrian-only space and revealing 35-foot-tall “BLACK LIVES MATTER” written in bright yellow paint; the plaza lies near the white house and represented the city’s support for the movement, as well as its rebuttal to comments coming from the White House (D.C. Mayor, 2021). This public installation was itself a protest by the city government, responding to the highly charged and racially motivated rhetoric coming from President Donald Trump and as a reaction against the “unidentified federal forces” who not only roamed and intimidated peaceful demonstrators but tear gassed and brutalized those citizens peacefully advocating against police brutality and racial injustice (D.C. Mayor, 2021). The initial mural was later converted into a permanent, 45-foot-wide installation in the fall of 2021.
Black Lives Matter Mural, painted in Washington DC, June 2020.
Source: Wikipedia
The Black Lives Matter Movement’s continued influence and presence within the political conversation also led to the eventual marking of Juneteenth as an official federal holiday on June 19th of each year.
It is only one of five, date-specific federal holidays, as it marks the anniversary of June 19, 1865 when the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect in Texas after the close of the Civil War (Czachor, 2023). Additionally, President Joe Biden’s announcement for an Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in 2023 reveals some of the movement’s enduring influence. As the National Parks Conservation Association (NPCA) describes,
The fight for justice and equality is never-ending, as seen by the renewed national conversation about race and racism in America. People such as Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley forced the nation to face the reality of racism, and their courage indelibly influenced the course of the civil rights movement and the fight for equality. Learning their story can help people continue to reckon with our past, including the memories our country is least proud of, and help enlighten the ongoing dialogue. (Coutant, 2023).
The rationale for the monument taken from the official NPCA website echoes many of the points and tone of the BLM movement, and reveals some of the movement's successes in raising awareness and advocating for equality.
"Black Lives Matter" on the facade of the Washington National Cathedral, June 10, 2020.
Source: Wikipedia