Kimberlé Crenshaw, Say Her Name | MAKERS Moment

Kimberlé Crenshaw, Say Her Name | MAKERS Moment

Video Transcript

KIMBERLÉ CRENSHAW: I'd been starting off a lot of my speeches about Say Her Name by asking everyone in the audience to stand, and then I'd say when you hear a name of someone you don't recognize, sit down. And this was in the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, so I would say Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and people would remain standing. I could extend it to Philando Castile, people would remain standing.

But then the moment I said Michelle Cusseaux, over half the audience would sit down. I would say two thirds of the audience. If I'd say Tanisha Anderson or Maya Hall, the rest of the audience would sit down. Within two names, pretty much everybody was seated.

All of these are people who-- Black people who are killed by the police. The ones you know are men who are killed by the police. The ones you don't know are women who are killed by the police. And no matter where I was, whether it was to activists, psychologists, lawyers, people who were deeply motivated to know this information they still, you know, didn't know it.

So we organized to lift up these stories through marching, through chants, through song, through presence witnessing what happened to these Black women and most importantly to provide a space and opportunity for the loved ones, largely the mothers of these women, to come together and build community.

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