Where did Black Lives Matter come from?

Alicia Garza published the phrase online in July 2013, and together with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi built out the tag and its supporting organizing infrastructure[1].

How do you use Black Lives Matter?

The tag is typically attached to Twitter posts about police killings, court decisions, and protests, and appears offline on signs, T-shirts, and painted messages during demonstrations[3].

Is Black Lives Matter still popular?

The slogan became a classic of 2010s protest language, with hundreds of demonstrations under its banner by mid-2015 and long analytic pieces in outlets including The New York Times philosophy column[4].

Who created the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag?

Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi created the tag together in 2013, with Garza writing the founding post and all three building out the surrounding organizing work[1].

Alicia Garza is a community organizer who wrote the founding Black Lives Matter post in July 2013 and cofounded the project with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi[1].

What is #AllLivesMatter?

#AllLivesMatter appeared in late 2014 as a counter-hashtag from critics of the movement, and was described by HuffPost as 'a form of willful colorblindness' that erased race from the conversation[5].

What is #BlueLivesMatter?

#BlueLivesMatter was started in November 2014 by conservative radio host Barry Gadbois in defense of Ferguson police, and spiked again in March 2015 after two officers were shot in Ferguson[2].

What is 'Black Olives Matter'?

Paisano's Italian restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico put 'Black Olives Matter' on its marquee in July 2016 to advertise a tuna and black olive tapenade dish, and later sold shirts and hats with the phrase[7].

When did Black Lives Matter go viral?

The hashtag went into mass rotation during the August 2014 Ferguson protests over the police killing of Michael Brown, and again during the response to the July 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York[2].

Black Lives Matter

Q: What is Black Lives Matter?

Black Lives Matter is a protest slogan and hashtag started by Alicia Garza in July 2013 after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin, and later expanded into an international network of activist chapters[1].

Q: What does Black Lives Matter mean?

Garza described the phrase as 'an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise,' meant as an affirmation of Black humanity[1].

2013hashtagclassic

Black Lives Matter is a protest slogan and hashtag started in July 2013 by Alicia Garza with Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin. The tag exploded on Twitter during the 2014 Ferguson protests over the police killing of Michael Brown, and by 2015 was appearing on protest signs, presidential campaign stages, and news headlines around the world.

protest memes hashtag memes social justice memes race and identity memes black twitter memes

Overview

Black Lives Matter is a protest slogan and hashtag that started in 2013 as an online post by community organizer Alicia Garza, written in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin1. Garza has said she created the tag with her friends Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi, and that the three of them built the digital infrastructure that carried it from social media into street protests1. Within a year the tag was in heavy rotation on Twitter, and its use spiked during the 2014 unrest in Ferguson, Missouri2.

The slogan itself is short, declarative, and built around a sentence that philosopher Judith Butler called one that 'should be obviously true, but apparently is not'4. Online, #BlackLivesMatter mostly appears attached to news of police killings of Black Americans, related court decisions, and connected protests3. Garza's own description of the project frames it as an affirmation of Black humanity in a country with a long record of racial violence1.

How It Spread

The tag stayed relatively quiet for its first year until Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson shot 18-year-old Michael Brown in August 20141. Protests in Ferguson, alongside outrage over the July 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner in New York, pushed #BlackLivesMatter into constant Twitter rotation and turned it into shorthand for a much wider debate about race and policing in the United States2.

In January 2015, the American Dialect Society named the hashtag form of the phrase its Word of the Year for 2014, and by that summer organizers were counting more than 980 Black Lives Matter demonstrations worldwide across 23 chapters in the United States, Canada, and Ghana6.

Activists began confronting Democratic presidential candidates directly. They interrupted a Netroots Nation town hall with Bernie Sanders and Martin O'Malley in Phoenix in July 2015, and on August 8, 2015 protesters took the microphone at a Sanders rally in Seattle to demand four and a half minutes of silence marking the first anniversary of Michael Brown's death, prompting a Reddit debate on /r/AdviceAnimals where a post questioning the choice of target racked up thousands of upvotes within 48 hours6.

How to Use This Meme

Users typically attach #BlackLivesMatter to posts about police killings, court verdicts, and protests3. Offline the phrase travels as a chant, a T-shirt slogan, and a message painted on protest signs and buildings during demonstrations. Common convention is to write the words as three title-case words, though 'BLM' is standard shorthand in headlines and captions.

Cultural Impact

Media analysts and philosophers picked apart the phrase almost as soon as it appeared. Judith Butler, in a long 2015 interview for The New York Times philosophy column The Stone, described 'black lives matter' as a claim that 'should be obviously true, but apparently is not,' and framed the counter-tag 'all lives matter' as a move that 'misses the fact that black people have not yet been included in the idea of all lives'4. A Guardian opinion piece described 'all lives matter' as, in context, 'a racist slogan,' pointing to a November 2015 Trump rally in Alabama where a Black Lives Matter protester was beaten while attendees chanted the counter-phrase3. HuffPost ran a longer critique calling 'All Lives Matter' a form of 'willful colorblindness' that erased race from the conversation5.

Fun Facts

- Alicia Garza described the project as 'an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise' in her October 2014 essay for The Feminist Wire1.

- The BBC tracked #BlueLivesMatter to more than 120,000 uses between November 2014 and March 2015, most of them from self-identified supporters of gun rights and the police2.

- Paisano's owner Rick Camuglia told Fox News that calls of support for the 'Black Olives Matter' sign came from as far away as Australia, Spain, and France8.

- The philosophy column at The New York Times, The Stone, ran a full interview with UC Berkeley professor Judith Butler pulling apart what the sentence 'black lives matter' actually claims about who counts as human4.

- Paisano's put the marquee sign up in July 2016 to sell a tuna and black olive tapenade dish, and Camuglia kept it up even after complaints from the New Mexico NAACP9.

Derivatives & Variations

#BlueLivesMatter: Started by conservative radio host Barry Gadbois in November 2014 in a tweet defending Ferguson police, and later picked up by law enforcement supporters; the BBC tracked more than 120,000 uses between November 2014 and March 2015[2].

#AllLivesMatter: Emerged in late 2014 as a counter-hashtag from critics of the movement, and a Guardian opinion piece argued that it functioned as a 'racist slogan' in the context in which it was used[3].

'Black Olives Matter': Paisano's Italian restaurant in Albuquerque, New Mexico put the phrase on its marquee in July 2016 to advertise a black olive tapenade dish, later selling shirts and hats with the slogan[7]. The New Mexico NAACP asked owner Rick Camuglia to take the sign down, but he kept it up[9].

Parody variants: The hashtag inspired satirical spin-offs including #BernieSoBlack, started by podcaster Roderick Morrow on July 19, 2015 after the Netroots Nation confrontation, and a 2016 'Robot Lives Matter' ASPCA parody video by Greg Killian using Boston Dynamics stress-test footage[6].

Frequently Asked Questions

References (9)