Black Lives Matter: Race, Policing, and Protest: Current Events & News

"[A] digital repository that seeks to preserve and make accessible community- and media-generated, original content that was captured and created following the killing of 18-year-old, Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. A freely available resource for students, scholars, teachers, and the greater community, Documenting Ferguson has the ultimate goal of providing diverse perspectives of the events surrounding the conflicts in Ferguson."

Veterans discuss the militarized police response to protests after the killing of Michael Brown.

In-depth timeline with map and comparison of witness accounts and law enforcement.

The following lists significant events leading up to Monday's announcement by a grand jury not to indict police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Detailed timeline of events that took place on November 24, 2014, the date of indictment

Waves of protests have popped up across the country after it was announced this week that a grand jury would not charge Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Mr. Brown, who was 18 and unarmed. But it is far from clear whether such actions will build into anything that brings a sustained social movement.

"Now more than ever, America needs productive conversations about race, stereotyping, police, crime and social justice. And too often, our national media continues to fall short."

"Policy experts and activists explain what’s keeping people in the streets and what the movement should consider next."

Documents and evidence presented to the grand jury in Clayton, Mo., that was deciding whether to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the August shooting of Michael Brown.

According to a preliminary release, an investigation by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division into the police department in Ferguson, Mo., found a pattern of racial bias between 2012 and 2014 violating the Constitution and federal law.

Freddie Gray's death on April 19 leaves many unanswered questions. But it is clear that when Gray was arrested in West Baltimore on the morning of April 12, he was struggling to walk. By the time he arrived at the police station a half hour later, he was unable to breathe or talk, suffering from wounds that would kill him.

It's an irony, a fundamental urban inequality, created over the years by active decisions and government policies that have undermined the same people and sapped them of their ability to rebuild, that have again and again dismantled the same communities, each time making them socially, economically, and politically weaker.

I DO NOT forgive Dylann Roof, a racist terrorist whose name I hate saying or knowing.

After the shootings in Charleston, I talked to my Grandma about all the work we did to forgive white supremacy, hoping then to be chosen by them and by God.

The Charleston police were quick to label what happened in the sanctuary of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church last Wednesday night a “hate crime.”

The mostly black town where Michael Brown died is divided between those
who think reforms are significant, and those who see them as merely superficial.

For all its success in raising national awareness about police shootings, the movement remains diffuse in goals and structure, making it difficult to coalesce around a concrete agenda and strategy to achieve change, activists said.

As demonstrators shouted, “Hands up, don’t shoot,” and marched toward West Florissant Avenue, the scene here on Saturday morning looked in many ways like a flashback to the protests that followed the police killing of Michael Brown a year ago.

President Obama said Thursday that black Americans were not simply imagining concerns that they are often treated more harshly and less fairly by police officers than are whites.

The passion that ousted the heads of the University of Missouri after protests over racial discrimination on campus is spreading to other colleges across the country, turning traditional fall semesters into a period of intense focus on racial misunderstanding and whether activism stifles free speech.

Campaign Zero, whose agenda centers on ending police violence, quickly embraced the offer for a town hall forum instead and began working to arrange forums for Democratic and Republican candidates. But members of an organization named Black Lives Matter, which first asked for the debates, asserted that only a debate would demonstrate the Democrats’ commitment to their cause.

As the police arrested three people on Tuesday in connection with the shooting of five people during a Black Lives Matter protest outside a police precinct here, demonstrators returned to the street with renewed vigor, vowing not to cower in fear of what one organizer called “an act of terrorism."

ACLU comment on Ferguson grand jury decision.

DeRay Mckesson, whose activism over the last year and a half has vaulted him from obscure Twitter sage to a political force in the national Black Lives Matter movement, announced Wednesday that he was running for mayor of Baltimore.

“As microcosms of society, college and university campuses are experiencing their own era of racial awareness, tension and unrest. Front and center in this movement are recent student protests focused broadly on social justice, and more specifically on campus diversity and inclusion.”

A discussion of how post-non-indictment rebellion is not "looting" or a "riot."

Calling out discrimination can be a slippery thing, but the shame, humiliation and powerlessness we feel because of overly aggressive policing is real.

An account of how the #BlackLivesMatter movement began and where it stands currently by one of its founders.

Review of indictment with examination of racial profiling and killing by police officers.

"It’s not just Ferguson—here’s how the system protects police."

The following conversation took place on Sunday, November 23, in response to the murders of Akai Gurley, in New York, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice, in Cleveland.

In comic form.

In a classic study on race, psychologists staged an experiment with two photographs that produced a surprising result.

One thing the grand jury decision in Ferguson, Mo., has sent back to the surface is just how difficult it is to have cross-racial discussions about crime and punishment in this country

It is fitting that this interview with Patrisse and Darnell follows TFW’s monumental, inspiring, and urgently needed Toni Cada Bambara forum, curated by associate editors Aishah Shahidah Simmons and Heidi R. Lewis.

The meaning of the Confederate flag is best discerned in the words of those who bore it.

What follows is the text of a “sermon” that I gave as a “congregational reflection” to an all White audience at the Bethel Congregational United Church of Christ on Sunday, June 28th.

Collaboration between MTV and the Southern Poverty Law Center to create PSAs and online interaction related to racism, privilege, and inequality surrounding Ferguson events.

Let’s talk about an active role for white people in the fight against racism because racism burdens all of us and is destroying our communities.

A report documenting the public policies that have purposefully segregated St. Louis County and many other urban areas.

What you can do to help the Ferguson community.