Derk Brownwas at work in August 2014 when he found out through social media that Michael Brown, an unarmed 18-year-old African-American, had been killed in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer.
When his workday ended, Derk Brown, a St. Louis resident (and no relation to Michael Brown), left work and headed to Ferguson.
That's the day Brown says he became an activist with Black Lives Matter.
Four years later, Brown now sees himself as a citizen journalist,livestreaming protests in and around the St. Louis area. He’s been interviewed by multiple news organizations and made appearances on CNN and Fox News.
"I've been arrested a couple of times so I’ve been through it all and seen it all," Brown said.
More:St. Louis sees third day of protests after officer's acquittal
More:BLM: Modern civil rights warriors
Michael Brown's death came one year after the tweet #BlackLivesMatter launched the21st-century civil rights movement, led by young people who have picked up the mantle from past generations, bringing in elements from their elders, while maintaining a style that makes thismovement unique.
The core objective is equal treatment for African-Americans by the criminal justice system.
"It's everybody coming together," Brown said. "Theyounger generation is coming together."
What is Black LivesMatter?
More:Black Lives Matter: A primer on what it is and what it stands for
It was quite some time before news of the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, spread beyondlocal news outlets to grab the nation's attention.
Martin was walking home from the store on the evening of Feb. 26, 2012, when he was approached by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer. During a confrontation, Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed Martin.
Investigators found no indication that Martin was involved in criminal activity. But Zimmerman was convinced Martin was about to break the law.
After weeks of national protests, Zimmerman wascharged with second-degree murder, and wasacquitted by a jury in July 2013.
After theverdict BLM co-founder Alicia Garza, an Oakland, California, activist, wrote a Facebook post that ended with the words"black lives matter."
Fellow co-founder Patrisse Cullors, a Los Angeles community organizer, shared the post and added the hashtag. From there, they were joined by Opal Tometi,a Nigerian-American from New York, in founding BLM.
According toblacklivesmatter.com:
"The project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters. Our members organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.
"Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in a world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression."
Comparisons are inevitable
With this movement spearheaded by millennials, there areinevitable comparisons between BLM and the mid-20th-century civil rights movement —when college students became Freedom Riders and were arrested at whites-only lunch counters, and school-aged children braved police dogs and fire hoses, while the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee devised strategies alongside the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
But after King’s April 4, 1968, assassination at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, the Black Power movement gained momentum as it resisted the non-violent foundation embraced by Kingforone that advocated black pride, black identity and black independence.
There are markers of both movements in BLM,saidHasan Kwame Jeffries, associate professor of history at Ohio State University in Columbus.
“I think in many ways it is more Malcolm (X) than Martin in the sense of what we see with Black Power is a more directly explicit critique of American systems and structures, which is something that’s less pronounced in the 1950s, 1960s civil rights era,” saidJeffries, who focuses on the late 20th century, civil rights and the Black Power movement.
He also was a contributor to the National Civil Rights Museum's $28 million renovation, which debuted in 2014 and included a more extensive look at the Black Power movement that followed the civil rights era.
"Black Poweris a return to a much more strident critique of America as a whole.The Black Lives Matter movement is an extension of that and an evolution," Jeffries said.
But comparisons between BLM and previous movements must be made with care, saidCharles McKinney, an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.
"You can make these comparisons, but we have to be very careful in how we make them. Black Lives Matteris a baby organization," McKinney said. "I think they’ve done some amazing work. They’re trying tounderstand the lessons of history and have those lessons inform theirstructure, have those lessons inform how they organize,how they protest."
The founders of the movement identify as queer women, something that would have never been accepted in the 1950s and 1960s, said McKinney, who holds the Neville Frierson Bryan Chair of Africana Studies and has conducted research on the civil rights movement and the exploration of local movements.
No one lays claim to leadership in BLM
BLM uses many of the tools and thelessons learned from past activists, said Erica Perry, an attorney and BLM organizer in Memphis.
But its founding by three black women, its unstructured leadership modeland BLM's inclusion of all gender identities —its interconnectivity —are far removed from the traditional structure of past movements, Perrysaid.
"One of the things that I think might be a bitmore of an evolution is our centering ofLGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender)folks and then also in many ways our anti-capitalist analysis," she said.
It's this structure that allows a second BLM group in Memphis to exist, said P. Moses.
"Part of the philosophy behind Black Lives Matter is its unstructured leadership model. Because of that model, Memphis has two separate Black Lives Matter groups," Moses said.
Absent an hierarchy, thiscentralized movement brings in as many people as possible from within the black community, McKinney said.
"It says we’re going to affirm people who have not traditionally been affirmedwithin black organizations," he said. "That’s a lot of work. That’s a heavy lift."
No one gets left out at a BLM meeting, saidkhalid kamau,a BLM activist who is now a South Fulton, Georgia, city councilman. He prefers to use all lower-case letters on his name.
"I am one of the first BLM organizers elected to public office," he said.
kamau's beliefthat to change policies youmust change the people who are in power takesBLM in a different direction.
“This is nothing that SNCC didn’t go through,” kamau said.
SNCC leaderJohn Lewis has now served for 30 years in the U.S. House of Representatives whileStokely Carmichael, one of the first to use the term "Black Power," would go on to leadership in that movement and inspire leaders of the Black Panther Party. He died in 1998 inGuinea.
As part of BLM in Atlanta, kamau met with Lewis and other 1960sstudent civil rights leaders. kamau helped push for the referendum that made South Fulton a municipality and now wears his BLM pin in his official city council portrait.
"This is where I give credit to BLM. Westudy our history. We are not just angry kids on the street," kamau said.
'We didn't destroy one thing'
But angry is how many see the movement.
Under the banner of BLM, activists have protested police violence against African-Americans,shut down interstates, filled streets, held die-insand in Memphis closedthe Hernando DeSoto bridge that crosses the Mississippi River.
It was on that day in July of 2016 that Frank Gottie went from a former gang member to a BLM activist.
"That was my first time seeing Memphis coming together," Gottie said. "And people were so afraid of us destroying our city. We didn’t destroy one thing."
Regardless,BLM detractors have spawned #AllLivesMatter as well as Blue Lives Matter in support of law enforcement.
In October, white nationalists marched in Tennessee under the banner "White Lives Matter."
More:'White Lives Matter' rallies: Opponents outnumber white nationalists at Tennessee shout fests
BLM has been called a hate group.
"I would say they don’t understand or don’t want to understand what we’re saying and haven't been listening," Perry said. "Because we're addressing anti-blackness doesn't mean we're anti anything else."
Trump administration forces a shift
BLM came intoexistence during the administration of former President Barack Obama, a world with asupportive White House and an understanding U.S. Department of Justice.
However, President Donald Trump's statements that there were "very fine people on both sides" after a counterprotester was killed during a white nationalistrally inCharlottesville, Virginia, and his more recent statement that African nations were "sh*thole"countriesleaveBLM without that underpinning.
More:Notable moments from President Trump's defense of his Charlottesville statement
More:Over 24 hours, Trump exhibits two starkly different attitudes toward race in America
The election of the nation's first African-American president wasn't enough to change a"structural inequality" thatis older than America andwoven into the fabric of the country, said McKinney, the Rhodes College professor.
But with Trump theveneer of civility has been removed, he said.
"I think him being the unrepentant white supremacistthat he is, the next scrimmage, the next clash is going to take on a totally different tone," McKinney said.
And with U.S. AttorneyGeneral Jeff Sessionsrunning the Justice Department with a law-and-order agenda, he said, it's going to be a "different kettle of fish."
For BLM and many others in the African-American community, the Obama administration was sympatheticbut not active enough and could have done more,Jeffries said.
"Now, I think it's safe to say you went from an administration that many in Black Lives Matter felt could do more but wasn't doing more to an administration nowthat is actively hostile and actively aggressive towards Black Lives Matter activists. And actively supportive of opposition forces like neo-Nazis," Jeffries said.
