Why #BlackLivesMatter still matters

Author: Shinjini Chatterjee

How was the #BlackLivesMatter movement born, and what was the role of Black women in its history and rise to global reach? I asked the authors of Unsung Stories of Black Women’s Activism in the UK: Spirits of Resistance and Resilience, Adele Jones and Diana Watt, who explain the central role of Black women in fighting social injustice, and why #BlackLivesMatters still matters: Because Black lives continue to be at risk from the persistent impacts of slavery and the racial inequalities it has spawned.

Here is their response:

Twelve years ago, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin entered an affluent neighbourhood in the United States of America and was shot for ‘looking suspicious.’ He was unarmed; He was Black. Outraged at the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Trayvon’s killer, three Black women – Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi – created the #BlackLivesMatter project. The aim: To fight racial injustice.

Birth of a global movement

Protestors turned out for Trayvon in their thousands, “We are all Trayvon Martin,” they chanted. They were right, for his would not be an isolated case. Across the US, racially motivated killings and fatal police violence have continued to claim the lives of Black men. And it is not only men: Tamir Rice, a child of 12, was playing with a toy gun when he was shot dead by a police officer in Ohio in 2014. And in Louisiana, 26-year-old Breonna Taylor was killed, shot eight times in her own home in 2020. Just two months after Breonna Taylor’s death, another killing occurred which inspired anti-racist protest across the world. #BlackLivesMatter had become a global movement.

“I can’t breathe”

It was the evening of 25 May 2020 when police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on a Black man’s neck in the process of arresting him. It would take nine excruciating minutes to kill George Floyd. Filmed by a bystander, Floyd’s last moments were viewed over 1.4 billion times causing outrage around the world. His dying words echoed those of Eric Garner, killed six years earlier in a police chokehold: “I can’t breathe.”

Once more, this became the rallying cry against racial injustice. But this time there was one crucial difference: It was no longer only about America, it was about the rest of the world too. As South Africa-based journalist Lynsey Chutel explained, “There is a George Floyd in every country.”

In the United Kingdom, where we are based, institutional racism within the criminal justice system has been a constant focus of anti-racist protest. Black people in Britain are still seven times more likely than white people to die following restraint by police. Between 2015 and 2021, 38 Black and minority ethnic men died in police custody. In 1993, when Stephen Lawrence, a Black British man aged 18 was murdered in a racially motivated attack, it was not only his death that caused uproar but the racist attitudes of the police which led to his attackers initially going free. It would take almost 20 years of constant campaigning, primarily by his mother Doreen Lawrence, before two of the perpetrators were convicted of his murder.

Black women, right there in the centre: The fight for social justice

Since its inception, #BlackLivesMatter has generated more than 44 million tweets. That three Black women spearheaded a movement with global reach should be of little surprise because Black women have long been centre-stage in fighting social injustice. Furthermore, Black feminist theory has led the way in highlighting the intersecting factors that have helped unravel its many manifestations. In the US, though Black women continue to be marginalised in discourse on police violence, their contributions to theory and activism are well-documented, whereas in the UK this is often not the case.

“That three Black women spearheaded a movement with global reach should be of little surprise because Black women have long been centre-stage in fighting social injustice.”

Consider for example, the mass uprisings that occurred in British cities in 1981. Earlier that year, 13 Black young people died in a fire in London. At the time this was believed to be due to a racially motivated arson attack. Known as the New Cross Massacre, the dismissive attitudes by the police towards this terrible loss of life in the midst of a general upsurge in racism, police brutality and inner-city deprivation, spread violent unrest (the ‘riots’) across the country.

Later, in reading accounts of what had transpired, one could be forgiven for thinking that Black women must have been cowering behind their front doors while their sons were on the streets. In fact, Black women were right there in the centre: They diffused tensions, they confronted police violence, they tended the injured, they provided refuge for those under attack, they cleaned up streets, they sought legal representation for those in need, they agitated for change, and they established programmes to support disenfranchised Black young people. They also organised vigils to commemorate the young people who lost their lives in the fire. A photograph of one such vigil is displayed on the front cover of our book, Unsung Stories of Black Women’s Activism in the UK: Spirits of Resistance and Resilience, which documents and celebrates Black women in the UK who have fought for social justice.

Racial inequalities and the enduring legacy of slavery

The #BlackLivesMatter movement has had a significant impact since its inception, and though it may have lost some vitality and urgency in recent years, this simply reflects the life-cycle of incident-driven social protest. Progress towards race equality is a long-term project that requires the sustained investment of social capital and also, alliances across movements. In the UK, for example, protests about racist policing have often sought to highlight Britain’s involvement in the enslavement of Black people. During a Black Lives Matter protest in Bristol, the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston was brought down and thrown into the harbour. Britain’s role in slavery was under the spotlight, and in the months that followed, 69 other monuments to enslavers were either removed or altered and calls for reparatory justice were given new impetus.

#BlackLivesMatters still matters because Black lives continue to be at risk from the persistent impacts of slavery and the racial inequalities it has spawned.

#BlackLivesMatter has enabled the writing of a new chapter in the history books, one which acknowledges the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity that has shaped the modern world into a place in which Black lives have mattered too little. If Unsung Stories is about anything, it is about providing the evidence for why #BlackLivesMatter is still important so many years after the movement was founded; it is about the value of building alliances between progressive social movements; it is about inspiring new generations of Black women activists and it is about supporting those most impacted by systemic inequality in taking up the fight.

Explore Springer Nature’s Black Lives Matter hub for current research amplifying Black voices and issues of race and inequality.

Adele Jones, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Social Work at the University of Huddersfield, UK. A social worker for many years, Adele later became an academic activist and is known principally for her work with vulnerable women and children for which she was awarded an OBE in 2021. Adele is the founder of the None in Three Centre for the Global Prevention of Gender-based Violence.  

Diana Watt, PhD is a trustee of the Louise Da-Cocodia Education Trust, Manchester, UK, a civil society organisation which provides education, employment, and enterprise services, in particular to people of African and Caribbean heritage. Diana is a former Senior Lecturer in Youth & Community Work studies at Manchester Metropolitan University and Associate Lecturer with the Open University, and was one of the UK researchers on a National Teaching Fellowship Project on diversity and achievement among non-traditional students. Diana was a recipient of the Public Engagement Fellowship scheme at Manchester Metropolitan University.