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Abstract
Today, Black Americans face the same foes as in previous efforts to secure civil rights. Over the last decade, names like Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, Tamir Rice, Keith Lamont Scott, Philando Castile, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor join those of Emmett Till, Rodney King and countless others as causalities of white supremacy. This recurrence has ignited and unified a generation of activists through the phrase "Black Lives Matter." The Black Lives Matter movement, like the Black Power movement, has named Blackness as a nexus for racial equity. For both movements, the specification of Blackness responded to a need to differentiate the experiences of Black people under racial oppression from others and binds members of this oppressed community to one another. In juxtaposition, both movements also trace the progression of Black centered social justice efforts led by and for members of the Black community who identify with the use of justified anger against injustice. These movements serve as critiques of the mainstream Civil Rights Movement and the ways that its leaders prioritized the feelings and permissions of white people. The objective of this thesis is to conduct a comparative analysis of Black Power and Black Lives Matter in order to better understand the rhetorical strategies of the latter, contemporary movement. Using Malcolm X’s Message to the Grassroots; Stokely Carmichael’s Black Power and We Ain’t Going; Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb; Nikki Giovanni’s Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why); Beyoncé’s Black Parade; and texts from the Black Lives Matter organizational webpage, the comparative analysis will offer an examination of each movement’s approach to respectability politics, Black identity construction, and leadership structure.