Black Lives Matter

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An NAACP flyer campaigning for the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, which passed the U.S. House of Representatives in 1922, but was filibustered to defeat in the Senate. Dyer, the NAACP, and freedom fighters around the country, like Flossie Baily, struggled for years to get the Dyer and other anti-lynching bills passed, to no avail. Today there is still no U.S. law specifically against lynching. In 2005, eighty of the 100 U.S. Senators voted for a resolution to apologize to victims' families and the country for their failure to outlaw lynching. Courtesy of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).
Some Exhibits to Come – One Hundred Years of Jim Crow
Mammy Statue JC Museum Ferris
Bibliography – One Hundred Years Of Jim Crow
Claude, age 23, just months before his 1930 murder. Courtesy of Faith Deeter.
Freedom’s Heroes During Jim Crow: Flossie Bailey and the Deeters
Souvenir Portrait of the Lynching of Abram Smith and Thomas Shipp, August 7, 1930, by studio photographer Lawrence Beitler. Courtesy of the Indiana Hisorical Society.
An Iconic Lynching in the North
Lynching Quilt
Claxton Dekle – Prosperous Farmer, Husband & Father of Two
Joshua Glover Plaque
Some Exhibits to Come – Three Centuries Of Enslavement
Harriet Tubman, "The Conductor," with fugitive slaves in Underground Railroad station
Bibliography – Three Centuries of Enslavement
Ancient manuscripts about mathematics and astronomy from Timbuktu, Mali
Some Exhibits to Come – African Peoples Before Captivity
Shackles for Adults & Children from the Henrietta Marie
Some Exhibits to Come – The Middle Passage
Slaveship Stowage Plan
What I Saw Aboard a Slave Ship in 1829
Arno Michaels
Life After Hate: A Former White Power Leader Redeems Himself

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Black Lives Matter, sometimes shortened to “BLM,” is an anti-racist movement that highlights racism and the disparities that evolve from racism, including police brutality and other anti-Black violence. Black Lives Matter gained popularity online after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer was recorded and shared by a bystander. In response to the video, which shows officer Derek Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, protests erupted around the world. These protests were often met with police violence, some of which has been declared illegal while protestors have been falsely arrested.

The momentum continued to draw attention to police violence, both as more Black lives were taken and as previous stories came to light. Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor are also victims who the movement has recognized. Thanks to the attention given to these cases, some of the perpetrators have finally faced justice, including Derek Chauvin, who has been convicted with murder.

BLM also encouraged police reform and greater investigations into policing, with some activists calling for reparations  or to defund the police and reroute funds to other social programs that may be more effective. The movement has further brought attention to international conflict and raised funds during the COVID-19 pandemic. In some ways, the movement reflects the previous Civil Rights Movement, which lasted through the 1960s to 1980s including the Black Panther Party, which provided community assistance. Because of this, the movement has been recognized for its historical significance. 

However, the movement has come under fire for protests that turned violent, for focusing too much on Black men, and for mismanaging funds raised.

A nonprofit organization, The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, also exists. Some people may refer to it as simply “Black Lives Matter.”

See all of our Black Lives Matter content below, starting with the most recent.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – How the Black Lives Matter generation remembers John Lewis

July 19, 2020

Of all the ways that John Lewis influenced American life and politics, his indelible impact on young people may be among the most enduring. From student activist to elder statesman, Lewis continually encouraged the nation’s youth to start “good trouble” — and modeled just how to do that.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History

July 3, 2020

15 million to 26 million people in the United States have participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd and others in recent weeks making the recent protests the largest movement in US history.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Africa Declares Black Lives Matter

June 26, 2020

The global uprising against racist police brutality that ignited in the United States has spread to the Blackest continent of all, showing that the aftershocks of class struggle in imperialist countries are often felt in the regions they historically exploit and oppress.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – How Black Lives Matter Protests Have Changed The World

June 25, 2020

In the month since George Floyd’s death at the hands of the police, the world has witness some of the most engaged, passionate and determined anti-racism protests and calls-to-action in recent memory.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Lafayette Square: iconic for Trump presidency

June 13, 2020

With his triumphal stride through the square to historical St. John’s Episcopal Church, Trump had hoped to appear strong and dominant, and to dispel the narrative of him hiding in the secured White House bunker during evening protests outside. Demanding a show of force, he sought to make the nation’s capital a shining example of how to control the streets amid racial unrest.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Protests push amendment to remove ‘slavery’ from Utah’s constitution

June 12, 2020

The recent protests against racial inequality could push legislation on policing to passage on Utah’s Capitol Hill, as well as a proposed amendment that officially repeals “slavery” from the state constitution.

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – King Leopold statues removed in Belgium

June 11, 2020

Introduction To This Series: This post is one installment in an ongoing news series: a “living history” of the current national and international uprising for justice. Today’s movement descends directly from the many earlier civil rights struggles against repeated injustices and race-based violence, including the killing of unarmed Black people. The posts in this series serve as a timeline of the uprising that began on May 26, 2020, the day after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck. The viral video of Floyd’s torturous suffocation brought unprecedented national awareness to the ongoing demand to truly make Black Lives Matter in this country. The posts in this series focus on stories of the particular killings that have spurred the current uprising and on the protests taking place around the USA and across the globe. Sadly, thousands of people have lost their lives to systemic racial, gender, sexuality, judicial, and economic injustice. The few whose names are listed here represent the countless others lost before and since. Likewise, we can report but a few of the countless demonstrations for justice now taking place in our major cities, small towns, and suburbs. To view the entire series of Rising Up for Justice! posts, insert “rising up” in the search bar above. King Leopold II statues are being removed in Belgium. Who was he? By Richard Allen Greene, CNN June 11, 2020 While statues of slave traders, imperialists and US Confederate leaders are being torn down, removed or protested against in the English-speaking world, Belgium has begun removing statues of its one-time King Leopold II. Never heard of him. Who was King Leopold II? One of the most brutal and ambitious of the 19th century European exploiters of Africa, Leopold II was king of Belgium for more than 40 years, from 1865 to 1909. A first cousin of Queen Victoria, he ruled at a time when Europeans were colonizing — that is, conquering — other parts of the world. Leopold was responsible for a particularly cruel part of that conquest, during the so-called “Scramble for Africa.” What exactly did he do? Leopold hired the adventurer Henry Morton Stanley to explore the Congo River basin, signing purported treaties with local leaders along the way. Leopold then used the treaties to stake a claim to an enormous chunk of central Africa — more or less the territory that is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Belgium then as now had a parliament and government that actually ran the country, and they did not support Leopold’s colonial plans, so he declared the “Congo Free State” to be his personal possession, not Belgium’s, and got other countries including the United States and European powers to recognize him as its “proprietor.” What did he get out of that? A huge fortune, for starters, based first on ivory and then on rubber when the automobile and bicycle industries took off. Leopold used a private army to coerce Africans to gather wild rubber from the vines of the…

Special News Series: Rising Up For Justice! – Houston Bids Goodbye to George Floyd

June 9, 2020

George Floyd’s funeral and the public viewing that preceded it a day earlier have been a counterpoint to the fury that his death touched off in cities across America.

Special News Series: Rising Up for Justice! – Know Their Names

May 26, 2020

This is the first of a series of posts serving as a timeline of the uprising that began on May 26, 2020, the day after a Minneapolis police officer killed an unarmed Black man, George Floyd, by kneeling on his neck. Here are four stories of the senseless killings of unarmed African Americans that have brought unprecedented national awareness to the ongoing demand to truly make Black Lives Matter in this country.

NOW: Free At Last?

July 7, 2019

NOW: Free At Last? Introduction   By the 1980s, Black America came to another roadblock in the long struggle to full equality. After the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, there were many more black college graduates, professionals, and business people than before. Many of them believed they would soon reach the American Dream. Working-class blacks, however, faced a very different reality. Factory jobs left the inner cities and the industrial South. This led to high black unemployment. The dreams that had brought many black people North during the Great Migration were quickly dying. White flight to well-funded suburban schools broke the back of school desegregation ordered by the Supreme Court. Police brutality led to black unrest and rebellion in several cities. The most well-known occurred in Los Angeles in 1992 after the Rodney King beating. The War on Drugs began to require harsher sentences for drug offenses. These have been applied most often to African Americans. The number of blacks in prison has soared over the last thirty years, even when crime rates are at historic lows. Recent “justifiable homicides” of blacks by non-blacks have again raised questions about racial equality before the law. This situation is being called the “New Jim Crow.” Still, the advances of African Americans in all fields – and the election of our first black president – have given some reason to hope. Exhibits