Black Lives Matter: Social Media and a Social Movement, Pt. 1

               Origin: A Phrase is Born

               Today, many people feel that racism is no longer the societal issue that it once was, but recent events have led to a modern Civil Rights Movement in which a community is bringing awareness to a cause by utilizing a twenty-first century tool, called a hashtag, to convey a message: Black Lives Matter.

               During the summer months of 2013, three women founded the Black Lives Matter Movement online, using social media as an accessible tool to ignite the sociopolitical campaign for equality for the African American population. These women were Alicia Garza, a domestic worker rights organizer in Oakland, California; Patrisse Cullors, an anti-police brutality organizer in Las Angeles, California; and Opal Tometi, an immigration rights organizer in Pheonix, Arizona, first encountered one another through an organization called BOLD: Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity. After an incident in which a teenage boy by the name of Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watch coordinator George Zimmerman in a situation that many people felt was only incited due to the color of Martin’s skin. When Zimmerman was acquitted for the alleged crime, Garza, Cullors, and Tometi determined that the fight for African American equality needed a stronger, more accessible movement that would encourage people to become more actively involved in the Modern Civil Rights Movement. Per an article titled, “The #BlackLivesMatter Movement: Marches and Tweets for Healing” by the staff at the National Public Radio, the phrase “Black Lives Matter” was first produced an emotionally charged Facebook post by Garza in which she concluded, “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”  Later, Cullors established the phrase as a hashtag, and although the hashtag was not used very often after its immediate introduction, recent and repetitive instances of African American people being killed by police officers in situations that many people deem as unjustifiable have allowed for widespread popularity of “#BlackLivesMatter” on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and similar social media web sites.