The Summer of 2020
The Summer of 2020
George Floyd and the Resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, protests broke out in Minneapolis and quickly spread across the United States. National unrest led to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and added to calls for justice in other American cities, including Los Angeles, Atlanta, Tulsa, and Louisville, Kentucky, where only months earlier, Breonna Taylor was killed by police. By some estimates, BLM protesters numbered between fifteen million and twenty-six million in the US and abroad.
The Summer of 2020: George Floyd and the Resurgence of the Black Lives Matter Movement spotlights the perspectives of individual participants who contributed to the movement’s revived impact and global success throughout 2020. Authors Andre E. Johnson and Amanda Nell Edgar interview the movement’s activists—from seasoned organizers to first-time protesters—to discover what Black Lives Matter meant to those who participated in one of America’s largest social movements. Johnson and Edgar’s fieldwork reveals the complexity of taking a stand, especially in the face of increasing threats from white supremacist groups, continuing police aggression, and a persisting global pandemic.
In a time with unprecedented levels of political polarization, the wave of support for the Black Lives Matter movement powerfully disrupted that expectation. Without a clear sense of what led to the surge in support for Black Lives Matter, racial justice advocates are left ill-equipped to maintain and harness the political momentum necessary to achieve lasting equity and justice. In delving beyond a conventional focus on leaders and figureheads, this volume bolsters social movement research by accounting for the increasing numbers of Black Lives Matter supporters and demonstrators and the lasting power of their message.
By centering the voices of BLM activists, The Summer of 2020 offers an informative, fresh perspective on and deepens extant analysis of the Black Lives Matter movements.
Through exceptional writing, The Summer of 2020 walks the line between popular discourse and academic argument in order to document and comment from ‘on the ground’ work of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Andre E. Johnson is associate professor of rhetoric and media studies and a university research fellow at the University of Memphis. He is author of No Future in This Country: The Prophetic Pessimism of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner and editor of The Speeches of Bishop Henry McNeal Turner: The Press, the Platform, and the Pulpit, both published by University Press of Mississippi. Amanda Nell Edgar studies issues of race and racism as they intersect with other identities, particularly gender and class. She is author of Culturally Speaking: The Rhetoric of Voice and Identity in a Mediated Culture. Together, Johnson and Edgar are coauthors of The Struggle over Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter.
