From coast to coast, black women are no strangers to revolution.
On the same night George Zimmerman was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon Martin, Alicia Garza and fellow community organizers Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi coined a hashtag that would birth an international movement: #BlackLivesMatter. Black women have always been involved in liberation work and protested in their own ways . They led revolts and uprisings . They committed arson and poisoned slaveowners.They formed activist organizations and investigated lynchings .
Yet, they’ve been marginalized by major protest movements. But not today.
From Tamika Mallory to the Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors, black women are at the forefront of the protests globally sparked by the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade, in the name of Black Lives Matter. Below, is a list of 14 black women of different professions, ages, and locations all across the country who have organized protests and contributed to the renewal of the Black Lives Matter movement.
1. Phyve-Nellie, dancer, organizer, and entrepreneur
“As a people we are hurting. As a leader, I noticed that there was room and opportunity for an organizer and camaraderie. I decided to step into that leader role because I knew I could bring different sides of the cause together to make a bigger voice to be heard and show solidarity in this very important movement,” she said.
“It was a personal choice…and it is a choice I have dedicated my life to.”
“So that I can put my actions to actual use within my community… I plan to continue to have uncomfortable talks. I will use my love for love and my love of people to keep the ball rolling as I do my part in this very important movement.”
2. Chelsea Miller, activist, Women Everywhere Believe co-founder
Chelsea Miller, a 23-year-old Brooklynite, co-founded the advocacy group Freedom March NYC after noticing a critical lack of oversight at one of the first New York City protests following Floyd’s death.
“When I went out that Saturday night, what I saw was really disheartening,” she told the Brooklyn Paper. “What I saw on the ground was that there wasn’t leadership.”
After Miller saw the destruction of New York City post-protest, Miller and her good friend Nialah Edari worked tirelessly to organize a protest which drew hundreds of people. Soon, Freedom March NYC began hosting larger events — including a massive June 4 march which led thousands of protesters from George Floyd’s memorial service in Cadman Plaza to Washington Square Park.
“That was one of the most memorable and significant marches,” Miller said. “There were thousands of people who crossed that bridge, it was non-violent … it was an incredible moment.”
The Brooklyn native said her experience growing up in Flatbush with a single mother played an important role in her activism.
“My activism has been informed by being a first generation American, by being raised by a single mother,” she said. “For me, my mom has always instilled in me a resilience and an understanding of your power and your voice, especially as a Black woman.”
Miller’s mother worked for many years at a foster agency, but eventually left the industry and decided to turn the second story of their family home into a group home for girls, Miller said. “I grew up with foster sisters and the stories of their experiences in the foster care system,” she explained. “To me, being able to turn the blinders to other people’s experiences is something I cant do.”
The experience inspired Miller to co-found a mentorship program as a student at Columbia University. The program, called Women Everywhere Believe, provides training sessions, resources, and events for young girls of color.
“I remember being in college and there were a lot of protests going on and feeling as though my voice wasn’t being heard,” Miller said. “So we created Women Everywhere Believe because we realized that Black women were not being centered in the conversation about police brutality.”
3. Nupol Kiazolu, president of Black Lives Matter Greater New York
Nupol Kiazolu, the 20-year-old president of Black Lives Matter Greater New York, has organized some of the largest George Floyd protests in the city — including a march on June 2 from Bryant Park to Trump Towers that drew more than 15,000 people. New York City’s Black Lives Matter chapter organizes demonstrations, drafts legislation, hosts a youth coalition that teaches young people to be effective organizers, and runs a political action committee that supports grassroots candidates.”Black Lives Matter, we don’t just protest, we work behind the scenes and the front lines,” she told (and 2036 presidential candidate)
the Brooklyn Paper.
Kiazolu had her first brush with activism when she was just 12 years old, after George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. After holding a silent protest at her Georgia middle school, teachers sent her to the principal’s office and wrote her up for detention, but her math teacher — a Black woman — stood up for her.
“This woman literally risked her job by walking down to the principal’s office with me with her hoodie on in solidarity,” Kiazolu told the Brooklyn Paper. Thanks in part to her teacher’s advocacy, the principal allowed Kiazolu to research her first amendment rights as a student to prove her right to protest, which she did. “At that point, I knew being an activist was my calling.”
Now, Kiazolu is a student at Hampton University, where she studies political science and pre-law. She plans to become a civil rights lawyer and politician. While balancing her school work, career ambitions, and activism isn’t easy, she says it’s worth it.
“Time management and working with my team is what keeps me afloat,” she said.
4. Jordyn Caldwell, student at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia
June 7, Caldwell organized a rally that saw more than 1,000 people in the old town Fairfax, Virginia.
“The video was everywhere and he was, like, ‘I know him. That’s my Floyd,’ she said.
Caldwell said her father met Floyd at South Florida State College, and when he found out she recalls his somber reaction:
“I remember he fell into a deep depression. It was just so sad.”
Jordyn, who lives in Chantilly, Virginia, called her father “a talker.”
“That’s the way he gets through things,” she said, “so I wanted to provide a space where he could talk about his friend and be honest about race relations in America.”
“This is somebody who is not going to be deterred by obstacles and naysayers,” said Kristin Johnsen-Neshati, associate professor of theater at Mason told Fourth Estate. Johnsen-Neshati had Caldwell in several classes and who attended the rally with her husband.
“She’s really going to stand up for what she believes in. This success is really going to fuel her,” said Johnsen-Neshati.
“Anybody can do this,” Caldwell said. “You don’t have to be a politician. You don’t have to be a lawyer, you don’t have to be an expert, but you can lift black voices. Go out, spread the word, donate, sign petitions, whatever you can do.”
5. Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and Professor of Pan-African Studies at California State University
Based in California, Melina Abdullah is a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Los Angeles and recently credited for leading reforms that call for alternatives to current law enforcement practices, like “community policing”
In the microphone, she called out George Floyd, Ryan Twyman, Wakiesha Wilson, Kisha Michael. After each name, she poured water from a plastic bottle onto the pavement while protesters responded with “Àse” (ah-shay), a word used by the Yoruba people of Nigeria akin to ending a prayer with “Amen.”
“Our power comes not only from the people who are here but from the spirits that we cannot see,” said Abdullah,”When we say their name, we invoke their presence.”
In an interview with “Call and Response”, a new show designed to respond to the changes and activism of our time, Abdullah explained her efforts as a community organizer and latest victory with “The People’s Budget LA. “ In June, a motion she proposed for police to no longer be deployed for non violent calls was passed by the City Council and Mayor of Los Angeles.
“They’re serving as social workers, EMT’s and drug rehab counselors, well they shouldn’t be because they don’t know how to do those jobs, and they were not created to do those jobs,” she told “Call and Response.”
Instead, Abdullah fought for an alternative budget, emphasizing defunding the police and community policing. On June 24, she told “Call and Response” that the mayor said Police will now “not be deployed for non-violent calls.”
“We have to couple this call to defund the police, with reimagining public safety,” she said
The mother of three argued that deploying mental health and social workers could have saved countless lives like Jesse Romero, a 14 year old child accused of tagging, who was killed by LAPD officers.
6. Foyin Dosunmu, student activist
In recent weeks, high school students have led protests in Greenville, Mich. ; Laurel, Md. ; and Berkeley, Calif. Adding to that list, are three teenagers from Katy, Texas, one of whom was a 16-year old Foyin Dosunmu.
Foyin Dosunmu, 16, told the New York Times “It really takes action in order for real change to come,” said. “That’s what we’re trying to get across and drill into the minds of the people of Katy.”
Born in Houston to Nigerian immigrants who are engineers, Dosunmu moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 5, and then to London three years after that. She was frequently the only black girl in her class.
“I remember thinking, Oh, I wish I was white,” she said. “I felt so left out.”
Although she takes part in speech competitions, Ms. Dosunmu had not generally been politically active. After the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery , however, she began to feel guilt, she said, for her relatively safe and stable life in Katy. She felt a bubbling need to do something in her community, she told the New York Times.
“I need people to hear my voice,” she said. “I need Katy to hear what I’m thinking.”
7. Tamika Mallory, co-founder of Until Freedom and former co-chair of the Women’s March
“America has looted black people. America looted the Native Americans when they first came here, looting is what you do. We learned it from you. We learned violence from you. If you want us to do better, then damnit, you do better.”
Mallory, the cofounder of Until Freedom , an intersectional social justice organization, and former Women’s March co-chair said Black America was in a “state of emergency” at the demonstration, where she was joined by community leaders including Jamie Foxx, Floyd’s close friend, former NBA star Stephen Jackson, and others.
“This is a coordinated activity happening across this nation, and so we are in a state of emergency. Black people are dying in a state of emergency,” said Mallory, 39, who formerly worked with Al Sharpton’s National Action Network in New York City.
Video of Mallory’s speech has been widely shared online and has garnered more than 5 million views on Twitter alone.
Although the officers responsible for Floyd’s death were recently charged , this is still not enough, Mallory told Vogue . “ Breonna Taylor still needs to be addressed as well as Ahmaud Arbery ,” Mallory says. “There’s more work to be done and we cannot take our eyes off of the ball or we might not see convictions,” she says.
As the child of two civil rights activists, Mallory has been going to protests for as long as she can remember. Even still, she feels that we’re living through an extraordinary time, calling it “one of the most courageous and bold moments in American history.”
Mallory recognizes a new level of empowerment in today’s protesters. “We’re not asking and begging for respect, we’re demanding it,” she said.
8. Nia White, student activist and organizer
Nia White, a 17-year-old from East New York, never guessed she would be at the forefront of a social justice movement as a senior in high school.
White has spent her spring semester organizing rallies and drafting policy proposals with Freedom March NYC. Last week, the group released its policy platform for 2020, which pushes for a number of police reforms, White told the Brooklyn Paper.
“One of the [policies] I find most important because I’m young is getting police officers out of schools,” she said. “It would definitely help with the school-to-prison pipeline, and we feel it’d also help the education system.”
White said she began volunteering for organizations advocating for Black women after getting rejected from several internships and realizing how few Black women there were in leadership roles.
“I didn’t see anyone who looked like me,” she said, explaining that she was routinely rejected from internships at law firms and political offices. “I wouldn’t get the positions, and I feel as though it definitely was because I already had two strikes against me already — I was Black, and I was a woman. And then my third was that I was young, so it was automatically, ‘You’re out.’”
White has interned for Chelsea Miller’s advocacy group Women Everywhere Believe (WEBelieve) and for Black Women’s Blueprint, an organization that hosts workshops and advocates for policies on behalf of Black women. Both experiences have helped fuel White’s activism, she said.
“It gave the skills to speak up and the information as well,” White explained.
9. Patrisse Cullors, Black Lives Matter co-founder
Raised in Los Angeles, Calif., Patrisse Cullors is an artist, organizer, and co-founder of Black Lives Matter. She is a New York Times Best Selling Author, Fulbright scholar, popular public speaker, and Sydney Peace Prize awardee.
During the mass protests against police brutality, Cullors has been a strong leader for prison abolition and defunding the police as the next step of liberation.
“The demand of defunding law enforcement becomes a central demand in how we actually get real accountability and justice,” she told WBUR radio. “because it means we are reducing the ability of law enforcement to have resources that harm our communities.’’
Patrisse also recently toured her multimedia performance art piece, “POWER: From the Mouths of the Occupied,” a gripping performance piece highlighting the impact of mass criminalization and state violence in Black communities across the United States.
10. Tayla and Cherese Myree, Community organizers
The demonstration was organized by mother-daughter duo Tayla Myree, a recent graduate of Syracuse University and her mother, Cherese Myree.
“We’re advocating for Black Lives Matter and making sure we’re getting out and making sure that our voices are heard. Clearly we’re both two fantastic beautiful Black women here, and wanted to make sure that everyone knows that our lives matter, that our brothers’ lives matter, that our uncles’ lives matter, that everyone in those spaces’ lives matter, and we need to continue to advocate and fight for this specific movement in different ways.”
Tayla Myree continued the narrative that has become prominent within the past week, that “it is not enough to just not be racist; we must be anti-racist.”
Cherese Myree has been a Georgia resident since 1988 and is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University.
“[Tayla] had a big part in informing my activism because she protested at her university against racism against marginalized students,” Cherese Myree told Decaturish.
“Supporting her in that work kind of opened my eyes and motivated me to continue to speak out. It’s always a subject of discussion. It’s nothing new for us. What motivated me to be here was, of course, another killing. The thing that happened with Ahmaud Arbery, he’s 25, my son will be 25 on June 17. That could’ve been him,” she said.
“We can’t just sit by and be silent. At the end of the day, people call for certain types of protesting, and call out protests that Martin Luther King did, but let’s not forget that they assassinated him. So, everybody’s got a voice, everybody’s path is different. So, my path may not be your path, but everybody’s got a path to the same end.”
11. Makia Green, Lead Organizer of Black Lives Matter DC
“There are lies that you are told about being a woman and being black: “we are here to serve other people”, “there’s no time for rest”, “just give up your whole self”. Those are untruths that I want other women to unlearn or resist when they join a movement. You are still valuable and your time is valuable. Don’t lose your humanity in fighting for other people’s humanity,” she said.
“Additionally, in a time when big businesses are constantly co-opting movements and co-opting everything we create, it’s really important to stay true to yourself and to remember that the work that you’re doing is getting people to a freer life.”
Green is also known for their criticism of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s choice to not defund the police, while commissioning a Black Lives Matter mural in the street now known as Black Lives Matter Plaza. Black Lives Matter D.C. tweeted the original mural commissioned by the city “is a performative distraction from real policy changes,” she said. In contrast, Green says the “defund the police” display by the organization is a “direct response” to the mural from the mayor.
12. Ariah Bremby, activist and organizer
Bremby, a junior at Greenville High School, organized the protest with help from friends, parents and teachers after she participated in a protest last week in Grand Rapids.
Bremby filed a special event application with the city, receiving permission to hold the two-hour protest at the public park.
“We definitely did not anticipate this great of a turnout, but it is so awesome that everybody is here right now,” Bremby said. “We’re going to make sure we are all here for good intentions, nothing crazy and no violence. That is not the message we are trying to spread.”
Greenville Mayor John Hoppough and his wife, Susan, were also in attendance with the Mayor holding a protest sign and Susan wearing an apron full of protest messages.
“I’m proud of the young people of our city, very proud of them,” John said. “They are staying focused on their cause and it’s a very important cause. I think that’s the important part of today, this is about the greater good. They are our future, they are our strength, and they are leading by example. Now people just have to listen.”
13. Teens For Equality, student led organization
Source: tennessean.com
A group of six teenage girls from different parts of the country came together for a unified mission: to organize a peaceful protest in support of Black Lives Matter. As the girls created the Teens 4 Equality organization and spread the message through social media, they hoped for at least 1,000 attendees. Instead, they were met with a crowd of at least 15,000 people.
Jade Fuller, Nya Collins, Zee Thomas, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith and Mikayla Smith — all freshmen through juniors in high school and ages 14 to 16 — took only five days to organize the massive June 4 march that took place in Nashville, Tennessee to protest police killings of black men and women, including George Floyd , Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor, as reported by ABC News.
Surprisingly, the girls — who attend different high schools — met for the first time on the day of the march. Now, their Teens 4 Equality organization has nearly 25,000 followers on social media.
14. Bree Newsome Bass, activist
In June 2015, Bree Newsome Bass was arrested after climbing a flagpole at the South Carolina State Capitol. Five years later, her protest strategy is going mainstream.
After white supremacist Dylan Roof had killed eight black parishioners and their pastor at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church church in Charleston, South Carolina, Newsome Bass decided she was going to scale a flagpole outside the State Capitol and take down the Confederate battle flag that flew there.
As the New York Times reported, Newsom Bass recognized that it was most meaningful to have a black woman remove the flag, because “the political power of black women is often overlooked and taken for granted.”
“We need to understand black women as the integrating force within the Democratic Party, an institution and a political party that historically was preserved for white men,” Ms. Newsome Bass told the New York Times. “The things that black women say become the talking points for politicians, but we don’t really have much political leverage beyond people calling for a kind of token representation from us in certain places or playing the role of mascot.”
In the last few weeks amongst the mass black lives matter protests, NASCAR banned the Confederate flag from its events and races, the Marine Corps ordered the removal of public displays of the Confederate flag from its military installations, Virginia gov. Ralph Northam ordered the Removal of Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond, the former capital of the Confederacy,and protesters have defaced and removed confederate statues across major cities. Even in Britain, people removed a statue of a 17th-century slave trader and threw it into a harbor.
“These monuments have little to do with the Civil War,” Mr. Bunch said in an email to the New York Times. “They first appeared in large numbers in the 1890s as symbols of white resistance to racial justice and as concrete manifestations of the ascendancy of racial segregation as justified by the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision that legalized the concept of separate but equal, which was inherently unequal.”
Though the flag was back on it’s pole after Newsome Bass was released from jail, her deliberate choice as a black woman to remove the flag that represents oppression and racism echoes symbolically at the head of a global movement.
Originally published at http://www.blackwomenshistorymonth.com.
