The breadth and
impact of Black Lives Matter in the United States has been
extraordinary. Between 2012 and 2016, thousands of people marched,
rallied, held vigils, and engaged in direct actions to protest and
draw attention to state and vigilante violence against Black people.
What began as outrage over the 2012 murder of Trayvon Martin and the
exoneration of his killer, and accelerated during the Ferguson
uprising of 2014, has evolved into a resurgent Black Freedom
Movement, which includes a network of more than fifty organizations
working together under the rubric of the Movement for Black Lives
coalition. Employing a range of creative tactics and embracing
group-centered leadership models, these visionary young organizers,
many of them women, and many of them queer, are not only calling for
an end to police violence, but demanding racial justice, gender
justice, and systemic change.
In Making All Black
Lives Matter, award-winning historian and longtime activist Barbara
Ransby outlines the scope and genealogy of this movement, documenting
its roots in Black feminist politics and situating it squarely in a
Black radical tradition, one that is anticapitalist,
internationalist, and focused on some of the most marginalized
members of the Black community. From the perspective of a
participant-observer, Ransby maps the movement, profiles many of its
lesser-known leaders, measures its impact, outlines its challenges,
and looks toward its future.