Radical Black Christians in Black Lives Matter
I interviewed Black Lives Matter movement activists, Bree Newsome, Rev. Osagyefo Sekou, Rahiel Tesfamariam and Marissa Johnson for my NBC BLK piece “Radical Black Activists in the New Civil Rights Movement”
“This aint yo mama’s civil rights movement.”
Those were the words emblazoned on activist and public theologian Rahiel Tesfamariam’s T-shirt as she was arrested in Ferguson, Missouri during protests marking the 1-year anniversary of police killing unarmed black teenager Michael Brown and the Ferguson Uprising that continues today.
In the three years since neighborhood watch vigilante George Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, black millenials across the country have taken to the streets, demanding justice for black men, women and children killed by police with impunity in what has become the Black Lives Matter movement.
Unlike the leaders of the 1960s, who dismissed victims like teenage mom Claudette Colvin in order to champion the cause of the more sympathetic victim Rosa Parks, the Black Lives Matter movement seeks to highlight, defend and affirm all black lives. At the forefront of this movement, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, are radical activists at every intersection of blackness—including the two queer women and one Nigerian American woman who together founded #BlackLivesMatter, celebrities like singer Janelle Monáe and trans activist and MSNBC host Janet Mock.
Shunning the emphasis on the cisgender heterosexual “respectability” and perfection of victims and leaders of the past, this generation’s protests are loud, angry, rude and intentionally inconvenient for the beneficiaries of institutionalized racism, shutting down highways and interrupting everything from political rallies to brunch to demand that the humanity of black people be recognized and respected.
But at least one tie remains between the movements of the past and today—many protestors and movement leaders are Christians.