Patrisse Cullors — activist, advocate, community organizer, and co-founder of #BlackLivesMatter — wants to set the record straight: "The story of Black Lives Matter starts before Black Lives Matter. The story of Black Lives Matter, for me, starts with my childhood."
Since the monumental activist movement was created in 2013 by Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, Black Lives Matter has called attention to systems that keep Black communities oppressed, including mass incarceration and police violence. The movement gained national attention as it protested the acquittal of George Zimmerman after the 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin, and the 2014 killing of Michael Brown, and the 2014 killing of Tamir Rice.
But it wasn't just those incidents that inspired the rise of Black Lives Matter. It was the instances of oppression that Cullors witnessed as a child that brought about the movement.
"The story of Black Lives Matter starts before Black Lives Matter. The story of Black Lives Matter, for me, starts with my childhood."
"The story of Black Lives Matter, for me, starts with the very first raid I experienced as a 5 or 6 year old in Van Nuys, California. Black Lives Matter is in some ways the climax of my life, but it isn’t the end all be all. I think it's important for people to know that many of us have been fighting for a long time. I'm 34 years old. I've been in movement work since I was 16 years old. Black Lives Matter becomes an important part of the story, but it’s not the only part of the story."
And, the story that gets told about Black Lives Matter is not always representative of the movement, says Cullors. Some have gone as far to call Black Lives Matter a terrorist organization, despite the fact that the movement is non-violent at its core.
"So many stories have been told about Black Lives Matter," says Cullors, speaking to the MashReads Podcast. "The beauty of building out a decentralized network, the beauty of building out something that’s a hashtag, is that so many people can take it and run with it. The bad part about that is so many folks can take it and run with it, and misuse it, and co-opt it. As I was developing the story, I had to be reminded by other people: You get to tell your story too. You get to name what you’ve seen and what you see is the next step of Black Lives Matter. You’re a part of this movement, so you can lay claim to it."
In her new book, When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, co-written by asha bandele, Cullors shares her side of the story. In fact, it's a dual memoir, simultaneously documenting Cullors' own life and the challenges she faced growing up, as well as the founding of Black Lives Matter.
This week on the MashReads Podcast, we chat with Cullors about her memoir. Join us in the episode below.
Interview highlights
(edited lightly for length and clarity)
You've been a community organizer for so long. What inspired you to write this book now?
"Someone came to me in 2015 and said, 'It sounds like you have a book in you.' And I was like, 'That sounds cute.' I started to look into it, I started to do my own research. I wrote my initial outline about what I wanted to write about, and then I put it down. I went back to the daily grind of community organizing.
“It wasn’t until I really started to see and feel the rise of white nationalism and the alt-right [that I started to think about it again]. I wanted to tell a different story about Black Lives Matter, especially after we were called a terrorist organization.”
How do you revisit [some of the trauma from the past] and write this whole book with the gravity of knowing recent history?
"When you grow up with a significant amount of trauma, you are realizing it as you get older, and you’re realizing the ways you can recover from that trauma. The things that I have witnessed and that I have been through, it’s going to take a life time to undo. And also, the things that I’ve been through and witnessed shaped why I do activism, shaped why I do Black Lives Matter. Would I have preferred that my family didn’t go through [the things we’ve gone through]? Of course. But what you see in the book is that every time there is a tragedy in my life, I really do try to turn it into some kind of action point. It’s my way of healing. And that’s how I operate. I am going to do my best to try to undo this thing that’s trying to tear my family apart."
Who are you writing for? Nobody wants to say “my book is for [blank].” But I think it’s a little different when you're doing advocacy and community organizing, where you are, hopefully, speaking directly to people to enact change. Who would say you are writing to?
"As I wrote this book and worked with asha on it, I really felt like this was for little black girls across the world, [the ones who] felt and had to hold the weight of their family and the struggle of their family on their shoulders, and had to survive it. This is for young queer kids who are trying to navigate coming out and trying to figure out what our lives are about. This is for poor black folks who are struggling, who need some support and hope."
Then as always, we close the show with recommendations:
Patrisse recommends “Anything by Octavia Butler, especially her last book Fledgling, which is about racist vampires. Amazing.” She also recommends Marge Piercy: “She mixes sci-fi and political issues together.” And she recommends the upcoming books Eloquent Rage: A Black Feminist Discovers Her Superpower by Brittany Cooper, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black and Free in America by Darnell Moore, and Unapologetic: A Black, Queer and Feminist Mandate for Our Movement by Charlene Carruthers. "It’s the year of Black Lives books."
Matt recommends 13th, the Ava DuVernay documentary. “It’s an hour and a half long but it took me three hours to watch because I kept pausing it, and I took 5 pages of notes throughout the entire thing. It’s incredible and if you haven’t seen it yet, it’s not too late.” He also recommends Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing by Charif Shanahan.
Martha recommends drinking water and meal planning. “It’s changed my life in the past two weeks. It’s made me a lot more frugal and that’s my recommendation.”
MJ recommends Nic Stone’s YA novel Dear Martin. “It is so good. It broke my heart in so many ways.” He also recommends reading Martin Luther King’s "Letter From a Birmingham Jail.”
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Topics Black Lives Matter Books Social Good
