Patrisse Cullors - Forbes 'Black Lives Matter Cofounder Patrisse Cullors On Her Activism—And Art—Beyond Hashtags'

Forbes | November 2, 2020

Following the death of Trayvon Martin and the acquittal of his murderer, George Zimmerman, in 2013, Patrisse Cullors was motivated to take action. She, alongside Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, created #BlackLivesMatter to expose ongoing anti-Black racism. “I hope it gets bigger than we can ever imagine,” she thought at the time.

It has. Black Lives Matter has evolved into a movement, one that’s still growing. In May and June, the hashtag was tweeted an average of 3.7 million times a day. On May 28, #BlackLivesMatter was used on Twitter nearly 8.8 million times—the most times it had been tweeted in a single day since the Pew Research Center started tracking it in 2013. 

“The virality is happening through millions of regular normal people who use the hashtag because they see the necessity to call out racism, to call out white supremacy, to call out anti-Black racism,” says Cullors. “I wasn’t a celebrity, we weren’t really known outside of our own cities and states seven years ago. That is the power of grassroots organizing—to be able to get folks to recognize how important it is to see themselves in each other.”

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