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Rise, 2012-2016
After death of Trayvon Martin, Black Twitter launched an online campaign to help Martin and his family. As the mourning intensified, George Zimmerman, a volunteer superintendent who had shot Martin to death, was arrested – laying the groundwork for a team that could be a major factor in our work today.
André Brock, author of Divided Darkness: African American Cybercultures: Many black professionals have questioned what Twitter can do. Although black people were like, this is not a difficult place.
Tracy Clayton, podcast host Solid Black Tales: After the new benefits came, I think it was like, Well, what do we do with our words now that we have found them? The assassination of Trayvon Martin is when I saw the potential for Black Twitter, as well as the potential for Twitter, to make real external changes.
Wesile Lowery, 60+ minutes journalist: My first tweet about Trayvon Martin said, “Until a 17-year-old black boy can enter any store in America to buy a shotgun Skittles, we can’t talk about the competition.” It was one of those moody times where I would break into endless soliloquy with myself, feeling that I could never do anything about it.
Jamilah Lemieux, Slate Writer: Without Black Twitter, George Zimmerman would not have been arrested.
Clayton: I remember watching the experiment with Twitter. I remember seeing Rachel Jeantel testify and feeling the pain of her experience. This was a great car not only for changing people but also for healing – being able to cry and grieve and be with people. That’s what completely changed my mind about what Twitter was all about. I guess, for me, it was fun already.
Naima Cochrane, journalist of music and culture: That was probably the beginning of what we now see as a hashtag activism, if you want to call it that.
The following year, on August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown, a graduate of high school last week, was assassinated in Ferguson, Missouri. He was killed six times.
Sarah J. Jackson, co-author of Doing #Hashtag: Race Networks and Gender Justice: One of the first tweets to use “Ferguson” – people had never even used the hashtag #Ferguson, they just used the phrase – was from a girl who was one of Michael Brown’s neighbors. He walked out of his door, took a picture, and described what he had seen. He did not have many followers. He was not a critic. He was not a critic. He was just a member of the community.
Johnetta Elzie, St. I was just walking around, and I remember being on Twitter laughing. That’s a woman DMs me. He’s like, “Netta, I just saw this picture floating in my time. I think you should see it.”
Apple rule, variations include: I saw someone write, Damn, I think he just shot someone out of my window. And he put a picture of Mike Brown’s lifeless body on the floor. He took a picture, I think, inside his house.
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