#SayHerName

Year: 2020
Medium: watercolor on paper
Size: 60”x40”

#SayHerName is a social movement that seeks to raise awareness for Black female victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence in the United States, and aims to change the public perception that victims of police brutality and anti-Black violence are predominantly male by highlighting the gender-specific ways in which Black women are disproportionately affected by fatal acts of racial injustice.  In an effort to create a large social media presence alongside existing racial justice campaigns such as #BlackLivesMatter, the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) coined the hashtag #SayHerName in February 2015.

Black women and girls as young as 7 and as old as 93 have been killed by the police, though we rarely hear their names. Knowing their names is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for lifting up their stories which in turn provides a much clearer view of the wide-ranging circumstances that make Black women’s bodies disproportionately subject to police violence. To lift up their stories, and illuminate police violence against Black women, we need to know who they are, how they lived, and why they suffered at the hands of police.

Featured here from left to right, and from top to bottom, are:
Kendra James, Pearlie Golden, Renisha McBride, Janet Wilson, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Sandy Guardiola, Geraldine Townsend, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Morgan Rank London, LaTanya Haggerty, Atatiana Carr Jefferson, Miriam Carey, Sonji Danese Taylor, Korryn Gaines, Alberta Spruill, Pamela Shantay Turner, and Layleen Cubilette-Polanco.