Black Lives Matter Archives

A new performance piece at Stanford mourns the loss of Black lives and makes a call to action

Eric Garner's death — and the haunting last words that became a rallying cry in the movement to confront police violence against Black lives — has inspired the creation of "The Ritual of Breath is the Rite to Resist," an immersive, multidisciplinary performance piece that both mourns Garner's death and calls upon the community to respond.

One year later: Following up with 5 local Black restaurant owners after the turmoil of 2020

After BLM protests and Covid-19, Peninsula restaurateurs convey hopes, pivots and grand plans for the future.

Un-forgetting the segregationist history of Palo Alto (and Daly City, and San Francisco, and…)

Richard Rothstein’s book The Color of Law documents how American communities—including much of the Bay Area—were purposefully segregated along racial lines. In 1954, one Peninsula real estate agent seized upon the sale of a single home on the east side of Palo Alto. (Book cover image via Liveright/W.W. Norton Publishing) Floyd Lowe, President of the California Real Estate Association at the time, quickly began amplifying racial tensions by warning residents that the one black family ...

Peaceful, powerful: Protests on the Peninsula (in pictures)

A highly spirited peaceful rally on Redwood City’s Courthouse Square drew a diverse cross section of Peninsula residents on Tuesday, June 2nd in support of the Black Lives Matter Movement. (Photo by Federica Armstrong) See what history in the making looks like in your backyard In the wake of George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Minneapolis police, an abundance of protests continue to persist around the nation. Here on the Peninsula, there ...

‘All of us can do something.’ Local black restaurant owners react to George Floyd protests

Support them and others by checking out our list of local black-owned eateries Lisa, Myles and Dulani Spencer in their home kitchen in East Palo Alto. (Photo by Sinead Chang) Lisa Spencer holds her breath when her youngest son, Myles, leaves their home in East Palo Alto. He’s 15 years old now — not yet an adult, but old enough for his parents to sit him down for a conversation about how to behave in any interactions ...

George Floyd and ‘the moral arc of the universe’: insight from MLK’s official historian

Beaten by police during the Watts Riots in 1965, Stanford’s Clayborne Carson says things are improving, but not fast enough Clayborne Carson, director of the The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, speaking on the Stanford campus in 2018. (Photo by Charles Russo) The killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers continues to incite mass demonstrations around the nation. As these turbulent protests surface in a multitude of ...