WATCH: In Our Shoes: A Roundtable On Black Queer Power By Patrisse CullorsIn 2013, Cullors wrote the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag in a comment on a Facebook status of cofounder Alicia Garza, who had written about the acquittal of George Zimmerman, the man who killed Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black 17-year-old who was innocently walking to meet his family, having come from a nearby convenience store.
The hashtag took off and morphed into a national coalition to uproot white supremacy, police brutality, and systemic racism against Black people.Cullors’s fight for social justice began at a young age.