The Hashtag #BlackLivesMatter is First Posted On Facebook and X (Twitter)
Today in history: July 13, 2013
On July 13, 2013, Oakland, California resident Alicia Garza, angry and saddened after Floridian George Zimmerman, who killed a Black teenager in 2012, was acquitted, posted a message on Facebook, containing the hashtag "#BlackLivesMatter," which quickly turned into a movement that spread throughout the United States, and the rest of the world.
Garza described her "deep sense of grief" when Zimmerman was acquitted, and was even more upset people were blaming the victim, Trayvon Martin, instead of the "disease" of racism.
A friend of Garza, Patrice Cullors, an L.A. community organizer, read Garza’s post and responded with the very first instance of #BlackLivesMatter.
Garza, Cullors, and Opal Tometi, a fellow activist, created a network of racial justice activists and community organizers they called “Black Lives Matter,” as the hashtag gained popularity on Facebook and X.
The hashtag phrase #BlackLivesMatter was rapidly adopted across the United States, especially after the killings of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and several other African Americans by police officers or “vigilantes” like Zimmerman.
The clear and simple demand for Black dignity was the basis of protests that took place after Michael Brown’s killing in 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri.
At the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement, polling of Americans first showed they disapproved of the movement when it was first created, but support for its main argument began to increase in the upcoming years.
Support for the movement increased by a 28-point margin within two weeks after the May 2020 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, after a nationwide protest against racism and police brutality.
According to the New York Times, the two-week increase after Floyd’s killing was almost equal to the increase of the movement in the previous two years.
Since the phrase “Black Power” originated, the “Black Lives Matter” movement became the protesting demand for racial justice movements worldwide.