Street Evangelists and Queer Prophets: Abolitionist Legacies In The Movement for Black Lives

August 9, 2020 marks six years since the murder of Michael Brown, Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri by police officer Darren Wilson, who referred to Brown as a "demon" in his federal grand jury testimony. Brown's murder, and the local Ferguson community's response to his murder, reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement, which had only begun a few years prior following the murder of Trayvon Martin. This talk takes the anniversary of Brown's murder and the religious sensibilities of Black radical activists and political organizers as a critical opportunity to reflect on the longstanding interconnectedness of Black religions and Black radicalisms. Looking back just fifty years to the Stonewall Riots and the mobilizations of such persons as Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson, two transgender women with expressed theological and spiritual commitments, will incite critical conversation in this contemporary moment on the place of the sacred in social movements and the crises undergirding Black radical politics. 

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Moved from August 14th to August 13th* updated July 30, 2020