Activist Alicia Garza posted “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter” after George Zimmerman was acquitted of fatally shooting Trayvon Martin in July 2013. Soon after, Garza’s friend Patrisse Cullors added the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which went viral, and a movement was born.
The co-founders of that movement — Garza, Cullors and Opal Tometi — were recently honored in a special double issue of TIME magazine’s “100 Women of the Year” featuring 100 covers of women who defined a century. The issue was released to coincide with the celebration of International Women’s Day this past weekend.
“While critics called Garza, Cullors and Tometi terrorists and threats to America, the activists continued urging the public to pay attention to the spate of fatal shootings of unarmed black men and women that followed Martin’s, shutting down highways, blocking bridges and staging die-in demonstrations,” TIME staff writer Melissa Chan wrote. “’We will continue to fight like hell,’ Cullors wrote on the group’s website, ‘because we deserve more.'”
The list also includes people like Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Aretha Franklin, Chien-Shiung Wu, Beyoncé, Serena Williams, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Marsha P. Johnson, and Toni Morrison.
