Is the Black lives Matter Movement a fruit of the same tree as the Civil Rights Movement?  

• After reading the article Black Lives Matter, I was prompted into thinking about so many interesting facts, such as similarities and differences between the two movements half a century apart.  I didn’t realize the civil rights movement often silenced its women leaders, like Fannie Lou Hamer, Dorothy Height, Diane Nash, Recy Taylor and countless others.  Fast forward to where we have a movement whose cofounders Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi have created a Black-centered political movement that has grown to 40 chapters. Consequently, the movements are driven by the same circumstances of inequality.  BLM was started as a hashtag in response to the high profile murder of young unarmed African-American, and the Civil Rights Movement was popularized as a peaceful non-violent movement in response to Jim Crow Laws. 

• The documentary the 13th by Ava Du Verray points out the illegality of slavery except for criminals.  The film suggest there is a loophole in the law that allowed for Blacks to be freed from slavery into mass incarceration.  The film shows how the system continues to protect and preserve the devaluing of the oppressed through mass incarceration, police brutality, and the war on drugs.  
• The prison system is a redevelopment of the Jim Crow laws which becomes reinstated once some one is labeled a felon. There basic rights to housing, employment and food becomes restricted. 
• Statistics shows that the USA has 5% of the world’s population, 40% of which is in prison and 25% of the prison population is Black.  With such a large disparity, does the prison system solve our problems?  There is no rehabilitation in the prison system. 
• The non-violent peaceful movement known to us as civil rights has resulted in Civil rights Act and Voting Rights Act.  The Black Lives Matter movement will too have positive consequences.  Attention needs to brought to critical issues affecting the lives of many.  As long as we are vigilant to having important conversations where the silenced are heard, change is possible, because Black Lives Should Matter, too.   Black Lives Matter is a call to action to help break the shackles of social injustices, because the Civil Rights Act did not do enough to end racial indifferences.  

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