In the wee hours of the night on February 26th 2012 a young African-American teen named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in the town of Sanford Florida by George Zimmerman (Hoffman, 2016: 596). Though Zimmerman was eventually arrested and put on trial he was declared not-guilty by means of Self defense, a verdict that shocked the nation and was treated as a national shame by the country’s black community. In response three racial equality activists, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza, and Opal Tometi, started tweeting and sharing the hashtag #Blacklivesmatter, and from here a movement was born. This paper will argue that the tactics and organizational structure of the Black Lives Matter movement is a natural progression from the civil rights movement of the past.…