49 Fun Facts About Black Lives Matter

Whose killing in Sanford, Florida, ended in the July 2013 acquittal that sparked #BlackLivesMatter?

Trayvon Martin was walking back from a convenience store when Zimmerman, the gated community's neighbourhood-watch coordinator, followed him; the 13 July 2013 not-guilty verdict sparked the phrase that became a movement.

In May 2020 a Minneapolis store clerk called police on George Floyd, saying he had paid with what?

A counterfeit $20 bill was the whole basis of the call; the teenage clerk later spoke of his 'disbelief and guilt', and it was never established that Floyd knew the note was fake.

Which NBA team sat out its 26 August 2020 playoff game against Orlando after police shot Jacob Blake?

The Milwaukee Bucks simply stayed in their locker room before Game 5; Orlando refused to accept a forfeit, and the NBA called off three days of playoff games before the players agreed to resume.

Protesters in which English city toppled slave trader Edward Colston's statue in June 2020?

Bristol fished the statue out of its harbour four days later and now displays it, graffiti and all, in the M Shed museum.

Which sportswear brand's 2018 ad starring Colin Kaepernick read 'Believe in something'?

Nike had quietly kept Kaepernick under contract since 2011; the NFL's own spokesperson responded that the issues he had raised deserve 'our attention and action'.

Which state retired its Confederate-emblem flag in 2020 and adopted a magnolia design in January 2021?

Mississippi voters approved the magnolia flag in November 2020 under a law that barred the Confederate emblem and required the words 'In God We Trust'.

What did Donald Trump hold up at St. John's Church on 1 June 2020 after Lafayette Square was cleared?

A Bible was Trump's own idea, reportedly over aides' suggestions, and he posed with it before the church's fire-damaged parish house rather than going inside.

Which mayor had 'Black Lives Matter' painted in 35-foot letters on 16th Street NW in June 2020?

Muriel Bowser had the mural painted on the street leading to the White House and renamed two blocks Black Lives Matter Plaza the same day; the city removed it in March 2025 under pressure from Congress.

Whose 8 June 2020 call led NASCAR to ban the Confederate flag at its races two days later?

Bubba Wallace, the first Black driver with a full-time Cup ride since Wendell Scott in 1971, raced the night of the ban in a car painted with #BlackLivesMatter and the words 'Compassion, Love, Understanding'.

Which player wore seven masks at the 2020 US Open, each bearing a Black victim's name?

Naomi Osaka packed seven masks, a different name for each round, and needed them all on her way to the title; 'the point is to make people start talking', she said.

Which co-founder's 2013 Facebook post after the Zimmerman verdict gave the movement its name?

Alicia Garza wrote that she was surprised 'at how little Black lives matter' and signed off 'Our lives matter'; a friend shared the post with a hashtag, and the phrase stuck.

Which co-founder created the hashtag in 2013 and wrote the memoir When They Call You a Terrorist?

Patrisse Cullors added the hashtag when she shared a friend's Facebook post; her 2018 memoir traces her activism back to being arrested at the age of 12.

Which co-founder bought the movement's .com domain and built its first social media pages in 2013?

Opal Tometi, a Phoenix-raised daughter of Nigerian immigrants, contacted the other two after seeing the hashtag and proposed giving it a home online; she now goes by Ayọ Tometi.

Which country's MP Petter Eide nominated Black Lives Matter for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize?

Norway's Petter Eide said the movement had forced countries beyond the United States to face racism in their own societies.

Which Australian city's Peace Prize, for 'peace with justice', was awarded to Black Lives Matter in 2017?

The Sydney Peace Prize citation praised the movement for 'reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism'; the award was presented at Sydney Town Hall that November.

Officer Darren Wilson's shooting of which 18-year-old in Ferguson, Missouri, set off weeks of protest in 2014?

Michael Brown had graduated from Normandy High School; a St. Louis County grand jury declined to indict Wilson that November, and the Justice Department later found he fired in self-defence.

Five St. Louis Rams players took the field in November 2014 in a silent nod to which Ferguson protest chant?

Hands up, don't shoot grew from early reports that the Ferguson teenager had raised his hands, accounts a federal investigation later found unsupported; four Congressional Black Caucus members repeated the gesture in the House.

A 2015 Justice Department report found Ferguson's council relied on what to fund municipal services?

Court fines and fees were budgeted to rise every year; in 2010 the city's finance director warned the police chief that collections would fall short 'unless ticket writing ramps up significantly'.

Notre Dame's women's team wore which phrase on warm-ups on 13 December 2014, days after LeBron James did?

I can't breathe were the last words of a Staten Island man held in a police chokehold that July; President Obama said LeBron 'did the right thing' when critics complained.

Who died in a banned NYPD chokehold in July 2014 during a Staten Island arrest over untaxed cigarettes?

Eric Garner repeated the same three-word plea 11 times while pinned to the pavement, and a bystander's phone video turned his death into a national case.

Which 12-year-old holding an airsoft replica pistol was shot by Cleveland police in November 2014?

Tamir Rice's replica lacked the orange tip meant to mark it as a toy, and the officer fired almost immediately on arriving; a 911 caller had already said the gun was 'probably fake'.

A 2017 Texas jail law is named for which woman who died in a Waller County cell after a 2015 traffic stop?

Sandra Bland had been pulled over for failing to signal a lane change; investigators found the jail skipped required cell checks and mental-health training.

Whose 2016 shooting at a Minnesota traffic stop was streamed live on Facebook by his girlfriend in the car?

Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor stopped over a brake light, had calmly told the officer he had a firearm, one he was licensed to carry; Diamond Reynolds began her stream moments after the shots.

DeRay Mckesson co-founded which police-reform platform in 2015, the group behind 2020's '8 Can't Wait'?

Campaign Zero launched in August 2015 with ten policy proposals; its 8 Can't Wait project tracks eight use-of-force rules city by city, though many departments already had some of them in place.

Nate Boyer, who convinced Colin Kaepernick to kneel instead of sit in 2016, served in which Army unit?

The Green Berets veteran suggested kneeling as a more respectful gesture toward veterans, and Kaepernick adopted it from the final preseason game onward, kneeling before every game that season.

Which NFL team, Super Bowl XLVII finalists, was Colin Kaepernick playing for when he first knelt in 2016?

The San Francisco 49ers had reached that Super Bowl, their first since 1994, only after Kaepernick took over as starter mid-season in 2012 from an injured Alex Smith.

Which Minneapolis police officer was convicted in April 2021 of murdering George Floyd?

Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three counts and sentenced to 22 and a half years; the three other officers at the scene were convicted in later cases.

Which US women's soccer star knelt for the anthem at a 4 September 2016 NWSL match, citing Kaepernick?

Megan Rapinoe knelt again before a US match against Thailand days later, prompting US Soccer to say it expected players to stand.

Colin Kaepernick's grievance against NFL owners, settled confidentially in 2019, accused them of what?

Collusion to keep him unsigned was the charge Kaepernick filed in 2017 after months without a team; later in 2019 he swapped a hastily arranged NFL workout for a public session of his own, and no team signed him.

Colin Kaepernick received which organisation's top honour, the Ambassador of Conscience Award, in 2018?

Amnesty International took the award's name from a poem Seamus Heaney wrote for it, 'From the Republic of Conscience'; Nelson Mandela and Václav Havel were earlier recipients.

Polls in summer 2020 suggested about how many Americans had joined the George Floyd protests, a national record?

About 20 million sits within the polls' range of 15 to 26 million; unlike earlier Black Lives Matter protests, the marches spread far beyond big cities, reaching hundreds of small, mostly white towns in all 50 states.

Which comedian called his 2020 special '8:46', the time first reported for the officer's restraint of George Floyd?

Dave Chappelle released '8:46' free on YouTube that June and noted the figure was also his own time of birth; prosecutors later put the restraint at more than nine minutes.

Which prize board gave Darnella Frazier, 17 when she filmed George Floyd's arrest, a special citation in 2021?

The Pulitzer board honoured a high-school junior with a job at the mall; her video contradicted the first police statement, which said only that a man had died after a 'medical incident'.

In March 2021 Minneapolis settled George Floyd's family's wrongful-death lawsuit for how much?

$27 million was agreed on 12 March 2021, in the middle of jury selection for the officer's trial; two jurors already seated were excused after hearing the news.

Camouflaged federal officers used unmarked vans to detain protesters in which city in July 2020?

Portland, Oregon's protesters were being seized by officers who showed no agency names; the state's attorney general sued, while a Homeland Security official called unmarked vehicles 'barely worth discussion'.

In November 2021 Minneapolis voters rejected a measure to replace the city's police force with what?

A Department of Public Safety lost 56% to 44%, 17 months after nine of the 13 council members vowed at a Powderhorn Park rally to dismantle the police department.

Which legal doctrine shielding officers did the 2021 George Floyd Justice in Policing Act seek to restrict?

Qualified immunity limits were one reason the bill, drafted by Karen Bass and Jerrold Nadler, passed the House 220–212 but never cleared the Senate.

Ahmaud Arbery's 2020 killing led which state to pass a hate-crimes law and repeal its citizen's arrest law?

Georgia enacted the hate-crimes law in June 2020 and replaced citizen's arrest in May 2021; Arbery had been chased while jogging near Brunswick, and his three pursuers were convicted of murder that November.

What did Louisville ban on 11 June 2020 with an ordinance named for an ER technician killed in a police raid?

No-knock warrants let officers enter without announcing themselves; Louisville also paid the family $12 million that September, and Kentucky limited the warrants statewide in 2021.

Until the 2020 George Floyd protests, which holiday was a paid day off for state workers only in Texas?

Juneteenth marks 19 June 1865, when Union troops brought news of emancipation to Galveston; Texas, where it began, made it a state holiday in 1980, and it became a federal one in June 2021.

Two months after Charlottesville removed its Robert E. Lee statue, which city took down the one on Monument Avenue?

Richmond's statue had stood since 1890; Governor Ralph Northam ordered it down in June 2020, but lawsuits, one from Monument Avenue residents, held it up for more than a year.

Which shipping company, then the Redskins' stadium sponsor, was pressed by investors in 2020 over that name?

FedEx was one of three sponsors the investors wrote to, and on 2 July 2020 it asked the team to change its name; three weeks later the club became the Washington Football Team.

Protesters in 2020 targeted statues of which Belgian king over atrocities in the Congo Free State?

Leopold II's statues were defaced and, in Antwerp, removed; weeks later King Philippe sent Congo's president his 'deepest regrets' for colonial abuses, though he stopped short of an apology.

Which F1 team, Lewis Hamilton's at the time, raced in black cars in 2020 as a stand against racism?

Mercedes gave up its 'Silver Arrows' colour and wrote 'End Racism' on each car, admitting that only 3% of its own staff came from ethnic minorities; Hamilton won that year's title in one.

Which football competition restarted in June 2020 with 'Black Lives Matter' in place of surnames on every shirt?

The Premier League backed any player who chose to take a knee, and at the first match back both teams and their coaches did so as the referee blew for kick-off.

What did Instagram users post en masse on 2 June 2020 for #TheShowMustBePaused, a music-industry initiative?

Plain black squares, an idea begun by two music executives, flooded the Black Lives Matter hashtags and buried the information activists were sharing there.

Beyoncé's backing dancers at the Super Bowl 50 halftime show in 2016 were dressed to evoke which 1960s group?

The Black Panther Party look accompanied 'Formation', released only the day before; the dancers also formed an X for Malcolm X, and Rudy Giuliani called the show anti-police.

Which Childish Gambino song was the first rap track to win Record of the Year, at the 61st Grammys?

This Is America swept all four of its Grammy categories, Song of the Year included; its video, released while Gambino hosted Saturday Night Live, was read as a statement on guns and race.

Angie Thomas's 2017 novel The Hate U Give takes its title from which rapper's THUG LIFE acronym?

Tupac Shakur's THUG LIFE concept holds that hate fed to the young rebounds on everyone; Thomas grew the book from a college short story, and it was among the most-challenged books of 2017.