When They Call You a Terrorist

St. Martin’s Griffin
Paperback
288 pages • $16.99
ISBN: 9781250306906

A Black Lives Matter Memoir

Patrisse Khan-Cullors & asha bandele

With a foreword by Angela Davis

“When They Call You a Terrorist is more than just a reflection on the American criminal justice system. It’s a call to action for readers to change a culture that allows for violence against people of color.”

—Time

For Patrisse Khan-Cullors, the most vulnerable people in the country are Black people. Deliberately and ruthlessly targeted by a criminal justice system serving a white privilege agenda, Black people are subjected to unjustifiable racial profiling and police brutality. In 2013, when Trayvon Martin’s killer went free, Patrisse’s outrage led her to co-found Black Lives Matter with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi. Condemned as terrorists and as a threat to America, these loving women founded a hashtag that birthed the movement to demand accountability from the authorities who continually turn a blind eye to the injustices inflicted upon people of Black and Brown skin. Patrisse is a survivor. She transformed her personal pain into political power, giving voice to a people suffering
inequality and a movement fueled by her strength and love to tell the country—and the world—that Black Lives Matter.

© Curtis Moore

© Michael Hnatov Photography

Patrisse Khan-Cullors is an artist, organizer, and freedom fighter from Los Angeles, California. Co-founder of Black Lives Matter, she is also a performance artist, Fulbright scholar, public speaker, and the 2017 Sydney Peace Prize recipient.

asha bandele is the award-winning author of The Prisoner’s Wife and four other works. Honored for her work in journalism and activism, asha is a mother, a former senior editor at Essence, and a senior director at the Drug Policy Alliance.

When They Call You a Terrorist has been adopted for 11 First-Year Experience programs, including at:

American University (DC); California State University Northridge; Highland Community College (IL); the University of Richmond; Northern Illinois University (two consecutive years); East Los Angeles College (CA) (two consecutive years); Tuskegee University (AL); University of California Santa Barbara; University of Washington Bothell and Cascadia College