#SayHerName--Justice for Breonna Taylor

“There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” -Audre Lorde

At 1am on March 13, 2020 Breonna Taylor and her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, were asleep in their apartment when three plainclothes officers with the Louisville Metro Police Department arrived to execute a “no-knock” search warrant in a drug case. The police broke down the door and Walker, believing they were being robbed, called 911, grabbed a gun and fired once, shooting an officer in the leg. He had a license to carry. Taylor was unarmed. The police fired more than 20 shots into the apartment and Breonna Taylor was shot eight times and killed. Kenneth Walker was arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer. Since the raid and the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor, more information has come out about the incompetence of the police in this case, and the misconduct of one officer in particular, Brett Hankison, who has been accused in an ongoing Federal lawsuit of harassing suspects with unnecessary arrests and planting drugs on them. All three police officers are currently on leave and this week, Louisville’s mayor and police chief asked the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to review the police department's internal investigation into the shooting. We join the call for the three officers, John Mattingly, Brett Hankison, Myles Cosgrove, to be charged immediately in the wrongful death of Breonna Taylor.  

As the movement for Black lives has brought increased attention to the murders of Black men by police and white vigilantes--most recently the murder of Ahmaud Arbery right here in Georgia--we cannot allow the deaths of Black women like Breonna Taylor to go under-remarked and under-mourned.

#SayHerName is a response to the Black Lives Matter movement and the mainstream media's tendency to sideline the experiences of black women in the context of police brutality and anti-Black violence. Black women and girls have always been targets of structural and interpersonal white violence at rates similar to Black men, but because of structural sexism, their numbers and names are often not remembered or recorded in the same way. As feminists, we are always fighting multi-dimensional battles, knowing, as Audre said, we do not live single issue lives. To see men’s lives and deaths more honored and more centered than the lives and deaths of women, even within movement spaces, is painful. 

As always, we believe that books build bridges and change lives even in times of great sadness, anger, and exhaustion. This booklist, inspired by the #SayHerName movement, features books on police brutality against Black women, the school to prison-pipeline and Black girls, the role of women and non-binary folks in the Black Lives Matter movement, and the historical underpinnings of our current moment. Whether you are a Black woman sitting with pain or terror or numbness at yet another murder, a Black man wanting to learn more about how to support the specific calls to action from Black feminists or a white or non-Black person of color trying to be an accomplice in the fight against police brutality and structural racism and sexism, this list offers many places of entry for recognition, for healing, for action. Together we can begin to envision and build a world that celebrates and fights for the dignity and freedom of Black women—mind, body and soul.