At the campus of Medgar Evers College on February 11, 2015, a panel discussion called “The Black Freedom Movement in the Age of Social Media,” led by diverse panel of social activists, addressed the recent political and social unrest in America. They discussed racial tension and how important social media is in exposing the truth of racial discrimination that ordinarily goes unseen and unresolved, and how it allows for all voices to be heard. Though this is an article about an event that happened a year ago, I think new faces of the movement for civil rights and equality in America that started in the 20^th century should be shown as what they are: informed young men and women in the 21^th century.

“I think Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram and social media in general give black people, particularly black women, black queer folk, black poor folk who are otherwise not part of the narrative of what black liberation looks like, a voice,” 24-year-old grassroots organizer and minister Nyle Fort said. Fort also said that Twitter has allowed for news to reported that mainstream media would not have covered and has somewhat ‘democratized’ the journalist space. Fort, who was at the heart of Ferguson during the Ferguson protests labelled #FergusonOctober, also went on to say that many people would not have heard of Ferguson if it wasn’t for social media.

Imani Henry, a radical social activist and writer, also stressed that being part of the social activism movement and social media allows for people to have access to knowledge that people wouldn’t ordinarily have access to. Henry discussed his involvement in the East Flatbush Copwatch Team, an organization that monitors the police in East Flatbush, Brooklyn in order to be able document any and all police brutality in real-time, even before mainstream media. “It’s a difficult thing to know Eric Garner’s murder was online, on a Facebook page, a day before it broke in the news,” Henry said. Henry also said there is a network of activists, across the country and the world, that are using their cellphones and social media in such a way where they can report events no matter what the mainstream media says or does.

Panelist and activist Darnell Moore discussed the importance of the LGBTQ community in social media. Moore discussed the history of a man named Bayard Rusten, who was instrumental in organizing the March on Washington in 1963, but rarely spoke in public due to being dragged through the media and denounced by his fellow black activists for being gay. He also discussed the social media slogan, #BlackLivesMatter, created by three black women, two of whom are queer identified. Moore said that #BlackLivesMatter went from a statement to a unanimously felt, real call to action throughout the world. “This came about from three black women, not a man, not a straight man, not a man who had his pants up, not a man who talked good king’s English, not a man who did well; a woman did that, and I think we need to applaud them,” Moore said. He went on to say that we can’t laugh at or deny the very people who put their lives on the line so that all of us can live.

Cultural worker and educator Jewels Smith discussed how she uses social media to give women a platform in the fight for social awareness. As one of the creators of the comic book series, "(H)afrocentric," Smith uses social media and storytelling to put women, particularly black women, at the forefront of the social discussion of the movement. She stated that much of the work of organizing a movement is tedium, it is phone calls and creating spreadsheets, and those that are doing that work are largely ignored and are the unsung heroes, and the people who are engaging in the discussion are almost always straight, black, Christian males. “We need to be able to write our own stories, and that’s one of the beautiful things about social media, and we can control the discourse in some ways,” Smith said. Smith went on to say that through her work and comic book, she reveals a different, more realistic representation of women and other marginalized peoples who are very much in the forefront of creating the discourse of social activism and leading the movement.

The panel discussion was part of Medgar Evers College’s Black History Month highlighting the accomplishments of Medgar Wiley Evers, Ella Josephine Baker, and Fannie Lou Hamer. A clip of the panel can be found here.