A Year of New Urgency for Black Lives Matter

From The New Yorker’s archive: a selection of pieces about the racial-justice movement in America. View in browser | Update your preferences A Year of New Urgency for Black Lives Matter In 2016, Jelani Cobb published a sweeping report in The New Yorker about a new movement that had emerged in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing by a police officer, in Ferguson, Missouri, and the massacre at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, among other events. Black Lives Matter had become a powerful rallying cry for a new generation of civil-rights activists, and, for some in the movement, the affirmation was “as much a reminder directed at Black people as it is a revelation aimed at whites,” Cobb wrote. In 2020, the phrase and movement took on new life as millions of people from all different backgrounds mobilized across the globe to protest the killing of George Floyd. This week, we’re bringing you a selection of pieces about the evolution of Black Lives Matter and the racial-justice movement in America. In “The Trayvon Generation,” Elizabeth Alexander explores how persistent patterns of brutality and discrimination have influenced young Black Americans. In “The Empty Facts of the Breonna Taylor Decision,” the writer ZZ Packer observes, “If the very gears of the criminal-justice system turn and grind in indifference to who Breonna Taylor was while alive—and kept turning even after her death—then we must change those gears, fix that machinery.” In “How Do We Change America?,” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor argues that efforts at reform must go beyond a focus on the police. Finally, in “My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children,” Hilton Als recounts his childhood in Brooklyn and the racial injustices he witnessed there. Taken together, these pieces reveal the extraordinary impact this movement has had on our political landscape over the past year. — David Remnick From The New Yorker’s Archive The Political Scene The Matter of Black Lives A new kind of movement found its moment. What will its future be? By Jelani Cobb | March 14, 2016 Personal History The Trayvon Generation For Solo, Simon, Robel, Maurice, Cameron, and Sekou. By Elizabeth Alexander | June 22, 2020 Cultural Comment The Empty Facts of the Breonna Taylor Decision There’s a lot that is just god-awful wrong here, but let’s consider what Kentucky’s attorney general didn’t say. By ZZ Packer | September 27, 2020 Our Columnists How Do We Change America? The quest to transform this country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police alone. By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor | June 8, 2020 Personal History My Mother’s Dreams for Her Son, and All Black Children She longed for black people in America not to be forever refugees—confined by borders that they did not create and by a penal system that killed them before they died. By Hilton Als | June 29, 2020 Newsletters Sign Up for The New Yorker’s Books & Fiction Newsletter Book recommendations, fiction, poetry, and dispatches from the world of literature, twice a week. This e-mail was sent to you by The New Yorker. To insure delivery, we recommend adding newyorker@newsletters.newyorker.com, to your contacts, while noting that it is a no-reply address. Please send all newsletter feedback to tnyinbox@newyorker.com. For more from The New Yorker, sign up for our newsletters, shop the store, and sign in to newyorker.com, where subscribers always have unlimited access. Contact us with questions. View our Privacy Policy Unsubscribe Copyright © Condé Nast 2020. One World Trade Center, New York, NY 10007. All rights reserved.