Black Lives Matter

noun

: a movement founded in 2013 to end white supremacy and support Black communities

Note: Black Lives Matter was founded by Black community organizers Patrisse Khan-Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi after George Zimmerman was acquitted of charges relating to his fatal shooting of Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012; the movement expanded as people reacted to police killings of unarmed Black people in years following. The name Black Lives Matter functions as a declaration that Black people's lives have as much value as white people's lives, and as a call to end systems and practices that challenge this fact.

—abbreviation BLM

Examples of Black Lives Matter in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

At the same time, social media has served as a reinvigorated source of transparency in recent weeks, harking back to the days when Twitter became an organizing tool during the Arab Spring, in the early twenty-tens, or when Facebook and Instagram helped fuel the Black Lives Matter marches of 2020. —Kyle Chayka, New Yorker, 29 Oct. 2025

Protesters toppled the statue and set it ablaze in June 2020 during the Black Lives Matter movement. —NPR, 28 Oct. 2025

Other groups involved included the Minnesota Freedom Fund, Minneapolis NAACP and Black Lives Matter Minnesota. —Talia McWright, Twin Cities, 28 Oct. 2025

The statue has been in storage since it was pulled down on June 19, 2020, in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests, when monuments honoring figures from the Confederate side in the Civil War were targeted. —Gabe Whisnant, MSNBC Newsweek, 27 Oct. 2025

Word History

First Known Use

2014, in the meaning defined above

Rhymes for Black Lives Matter

• antimatter
• atter
• batter
• blatter
• catarrh
• chatter
• clatter
• fatter
• flatter
• hatter
• latter
• natter