Black Lives Matter

CTL-E-5438 · Organization · civil-rights · 2013–present

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

Black Lives Matter began on July 13, 2013, when, after George Zimmerman's acquittal in the killing of Trayvon Martin, Oakland organizer Alicia Garza posted a love letter to Black people ending in the words 'our lives matter'; Patrisse Cullors added the hashtag, and Opal Tometi built the digital infrastructure — three founders, all Black women, launching what became a decentralized global movement against police violence and systemic racism. The movement reached national scale in 2014 through the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, after Michael Brown's killing, growing a network of local chapters under the Black Lives Matter Global Network while remaining, by design, leader-full rather than leader-led. Its largest hour came in 2020, when the George Floyd protests (CTL-E-5439) carried its language into the biggest protest mobilization in American history. The intake timeline leaves the movement undated; the audit supplies 2013. CTL files BLM as an Organization of subtype civil-rights — the graph's closest vessel for a movement that also has a formal network — with this note recording that the record covers the movement entire, not only its incorporated forms.

The record

• Also known as: BLM, Black Lives Matter Movement

Notes

Statistics: Founded July 13, 2013 (Wikipedia; FactMonster). The intake paste leaves stop #42 UNDATED — one of four undated entries flagged in the audit; the founding date is supplied here from the sources. Founders named in full, per the graph's first duty. The movement's 2020 mobilization is held at CTL-E-5439. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: The timeline's only living movement, and the record writes it in the present tense deliberately. BLM's founders built the hashtag as infrastructure — a sentence anyone could pick up — and the graph's job is the older one: names, dates, and the chain of custody of an idea, kept accurately while it is still warm. · Photo slot: HELD — no rights-cleared image was verified for this record in the merge run's bounded Commons sweep (2026-10-15); slot stays HELD until a cleared image is obtained (commons upload, public-domain government portrait, or CTL original), per CTL-PHOTO-001.

Sources

• Wikipedia, 'Black Lives Matter' (infobox and history) — supports: formation July 13, 2013; founders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi; the Zimmerman acquittal as catalyst
• FactMonster, 'Black Lives Matter' — supports: the 2013 founding by Garza, Cullors, and Tometi and the movement's growth after Ferguson in 2014 — https://www.factmonster.com/encyclopedia/history/north-america/us/black-lives-matter
• WCMU Public Media, ''A Movement, Not A Moment': Black Lives Matter Marks 8 Years' (2021) — supports: the founders' account of the movement's 2013 origin and its 2020 peak

Record CTL-E-5438 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 3 sources · CTL research: BCI-001, RELP-001.
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