black matter experiment 2022

Ambitious new dark matter-hunting experiment delivers 1st results

"If you think about it like a radio, the search for dark matter is like tuning the dial to search for one particular radio station. Our method is like doing a scan of 100,000 radio stations."

A new experiment designed to search the cosmos for its most mysterious "stuff," dark matter, has delivered its first results. 

While the Broadband Reflector Experiment for Axion Detection (BREAD) developed by the University of Chicago and the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermilab hasn't turned up dark matter particles just yet, the new results place a tighter constraint on the type of characteristics scientists can expect such particles to have. The BREAD experiment itself also served up an exciting new recipe that could be used in the hunt for dark matter — a relatively inexpensive one that doesn't take up a vast amount of space. 

BREAD takes a "broadband" approach to search for hypothetical dark matter particles called " axions " and associated " dark photons " across a larger set of possibilities than other experiments, albeit with slightly less precision.

"If you think about it like a radio, the search for dark matter is like tuning the dial to search for one particular radio station, except there are a million frequencies to check through," University of Chicago scientist and BREAD project co-leader David Miller said in a statement . "Our method is like doing a scan of 100,000 radio stations, rather than a few very thoroughly."

Related: What is dark matter?

A small experiment to tackle a big problem

Dark matter represents a huge problem for scientists because, despite the fact it makes up around 85% of the matter in the universe and its influence prevents galaxies from flying apart as they spin, we have little idea what it is made of.

That is in part because dark matter is effectively invisible ; it doesn't seem to interact with light, neither emitting nor reflecting standard photons. That lack of electromagnetic interaction suggests that dark matter isn't composed of the protons, neutrons and electrons that comprise "normal matter" objects like stars, planets, moons, our bodies and the cat next door.

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Though our telescopes can't detect dark matter directly, the stuff does affect stars, galaxies, and even light via its interactions with gravity . So astronomers can tell that something is there — they just don't know what it is. Knowing what to look for and exactly where to look is a different matter.

"We’re very confident that something is there, but there are many, many forms it could take," said Miller.

This confusion has sent scientists on the hunt for different particles with strange properties that could comprise dark matter. One such candidate is the axion , a hypothetical particle with an extremely small mass. Should axions exist, they may interact with a so-called dark photon just as everyday matter interacts with "ordinary" photons. This interaction could occasionally prompt the creation of a visible photon under certain circumstances. 

BREAD is a coaxial dish antenna in the shape of a curved metal tube that can fit on a tabletop. The experiment is designed to catch photons and funnel them to a sensor at one end to search for a subset of possible axions.

The full-scale BREAD experiment will see the equipment sit within a strong magnetic field, which the team says will increase the chances of the conversion of axons to photons. As a proof of principle, the team conducted a BREAD experiment minus the magnets needed to generate this field.

The proto-BREAD experiment ran at the University of Chicago for a month and delivered some interesting data, whetting the team's appetite for the full-scale experiment. The test results showed that BREAD was highly sensitive in the range of frequencies that the team had designed it to probe. 

"This is just the first step in a series of exciting experiments we are planning," BREAD co-leader and Fermilab researcher Andrew Sonnenschein said. "We have many ideas for improving the sensitivity of our axion search."

The test also demonstrated that particle physics can be done on a tabletop as well as in huge particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) , which runs for 17 miles (27 kilometers) deep under the border between France and Switzerland.

"This result is a milestone for our concept, demonstrating for the first time the power of our approach," said Stefan Knirck, the Fermilab postdoctoral scholar who led the development and construction of BREAD. "It is great to do this kind of creative tabletop-scale science, where a small team can do everything from building the experiment to data analysis but still have a great impact on modern particle physics."

— Our universe's smallest galaxies hold the largest star factories. Here's why

— The faintest star system orbiting our Milky Way may be dominated by dark matter

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The next stage of the BREAD experiment will see the apparatus transported to the magnet facility at Argonne National Laboratory. Additionally, facilities like SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, MIT, Caltech, and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory are working on research and development with the University of Chicago and Fermilab for future recipes of the BREAD experiment.

"There are still so many open questions in science and an enormous space for creative new ideas for tackling those questions," Miller concluded. "I think this is a real hallmark example of those kinds of creative ideas — in this case, impactful, collaborative partnerships between smaller-scale science at universities and larger-scale science at national laboratories."

The team's research is detailed in a paper published late last month in the journal Physical Review Letters.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: [email protected].

Robert Lea is a science journalist in the U.K. whose articles have been published in Physics World, New Scientist, Astronomy Magazine, All About Space, Newsweek and ZME Science. He also writes about science communication for Elsevier and the European Journal of Physics. Rob holds a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the U.K.’s Open University. Follow him on Twitter @sciencef1rst.

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Admin said: The new BREAD experiment, which was designed to search the cosmos for mysterious dark matter, has returned its first results. Ambitious new dark matter-hunting experiment delivers 1st results : Read more

philbundy said: Dark matter is not matter at all it is magnetism and electromagnetic waves are invisible to us. It can be nothing else; I realize pretending to look for it pays the bills, so carry on.

• Papaspud Whenever I see the terms- dark matter, or dark energy as the explanation for something or another that they have no clue about, and are just wildly guessing...I just go back to my roots and translate= Magic! Reply

It was recently pointed out that old, isolated, NSs in the Solar neighborhood could be heated by DM capture , leading to a temperature increase of ∼ 2000 K. At ages greater than ∼ 10 Myr, isolated NSs are expected to cool to temperatures below this, provided they are not reheated by accretion of standard matter or by internal heating mechanisms . Asa result, the observation of a local NS with a temperature O(1000 K) could provide stringent constraints on DM interactions. Importantly, NS temperatures in this range would result in near-infrared emission, potentially detectable by future telescopes.

• Unclear Engineer At this point, both "dark matter" and "dark energy" are really only theoretical place holders in our theories, needed to make the theories fit the observations. Theorists have been free to assume that each does exactly what is needed to make the fits, without doing anything else that would mess-up the fits. Experiments to detect, or if not detect, limit the range of potential parameters for dark matter and dark energy candidates have so far just made the limits somewhat tighter, without any real detections. All we can really say at t his point is that "something" is making our observations differ from our expectations based on the physics that we understand, and use the "dark" names for those "somethings", until we actually find something - or realize that we have been missing something important in the theories. At this point, I think we are going to need a bigger telescope. Reply
• Manix What any of this proves is that we don't understand the univers (and the likes of gravity) as well as we think we do. The fact all these experiments come up empty handed while looking for Dark Matter, says a lot. As Occams Razor goes.. Reply
• Evil Red Smurf There are many theories and nobody knows the truth yet. A theory I like is the following: "Gravity in space-time is like an elastic band, and a star is like a weight hung from the elastic band - The greater the weight that is hung the more stretched the elastic band. When the weight is removed the elastic band returned to its original length and shape. However if the weight hung from the elastic bank is insufficient to snap it, but greater than the elasticity limit of the elastic, then when the weight is removed the elastic does not return to its original shape. Instead it is left with a ripple. The stretch on the elastic is like the gravitational effect of the star on space-time, but with Black Holes this is different, they stretch space-time, and if space-time has an elasticity limit then it may not return to its original ' shape '. Instead space-time is left with a ripple. What is that ripple? It's a fluctuation in space-time that behaves as though there is matter present, but without there being matter present - therefore: no visible matter, no reflected particles, in fact nothing there. But still bending light from distant stars as though there is a body present." Reply
• JCD "Dark Matter" adds another onion layer of unknowing to what I already don't know. I admire those who are determined to investigate such questions. I am not sure I'm up to that level of challenge. Reply
• View All 11 Comments

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Global hunt for dark matter arrives in Australia with completion of Stage 1 of Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory

Located one kilometre underground in the Stawell Gold Mine, the first dark matter laboratory in the Southern Hemisphere is preparing to join the global quest to understand the nature of dark matter and unlock the secrets of our universe.

Officially unveiled today, the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) will be the new epicentre of dark matter research in Australia.

Lead researcher on the project University of Melbourne Professor Elisabetta Barberio said dark matter has been eluding scientists for decades.

“We know there is much more matter in the universe than we can see,” Professor Barberio said.

“With the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory, we have the tools and location to detect this dark matter. Proving the existence of dark matter will help us understand its nature and forever change how we see the universe.”

With Stage 1 now complete, the lab is ready to host the experiment known as SABRE South to be installed over the coming months, which aims to directly detect dark matter.

SABRE South will run in conjunction with the complementary SABRE experiment taking place in Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, Italy. These experiments are designed to detect Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), one of the likely forms for dark matter particles.

Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research) at the University of Melbourne Professor James McCluskey said universities are places of deep discovery supported by global partnerships in advancing the frontiers of knowledge.

“Research which is needed to address the great unanswered questions – such as ‘what is dark matter?’ – is nearly always done in collaboration," Professor McCluskey said.

“Working with our partners and sharing our collective knowledge and expertise, the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory will facilitate experiments which are critical in the global search for dark matter.’’

The Australian and Victorian governments each gave $5 million in funding for the building of SUPL, and this funding was boosted by the Australian Research Council awarding a $35 million grant for the development of a Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics.

The laboratory was constructed by Ballarat based H. Troon, using many local contractors throughout the build.

The Stawell laboratory will be managed by SUPL Ltd., which is co-owned by the University of Melbourne, ANSTO, the Australian National University, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Adelaide.

Chair of SUPL Ltd. Dr Sue Barrell AO said the eyes of the world would soon turn to this historic Victorian town.

“Stawell sits at a junction between the SUPL partner organisations in Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and Adelaide. And now with the establishment of this laboratory, SUPL sits at the centre of dark matter research globally.”

19 Aug 2022

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As the Large Hadron Collider Revs Up, Physicists’ Hopes Soar

The particle collider at CERN will soon restart. “There could be a revolution coming,” scientists say.

By Dennis Overbye

In April, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, once again fired up their cosmic gun, the Large Hadron Collider. After a three-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, the collider has resumed shooting protons — the naked guts of hydrogen atoms — around its 17-mile electromagnetic underground racetrack. In early July, the collider will begin crashing these particles together to create sparks of primordial energy.

And so the great game of hunting for the secret of the universe is about to be on again, amid new developments and the refreshed hopes of particle physicists. Even before its renovation, the collider had been producing hints that nature could be hiding something spectacular. Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who conducts an experiment at CERN, described data from his previous runs as “the most exciting set of results I’ve seen in my professional lifetime.”

A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say.

When the CERN collider was first turned on in 2010, the universe was up for grabs. The machine, the biggest and most powerful ever built, was designed to find the Higgs boson. That particle is the keystone of the Standard Model, a set of equations that explains everything scientists have been able to measure about the subatomic world.

But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the “dark matter” that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass?

Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs — in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.

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August 22, 2022

Digging deep for dark matter

by Imogen Crump, University of Melbourne

It takes around half an hour to get to the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory. Thirty minutes may not sound like a long time, but that's half an hour spent plunging downwards in a truck as it twists and turns its way deeper into the pitch-black tunnels of the Stawell Gold Mine.

Professor Elisabetta Barberio is unfazed. The University of Melbourne physicist and Director of the Center of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics has made the journey below a kilometer of rock many times.

"It gets hotter and more humid," she says, as the truck's headlights light up another sheer wall of rock curving off into the darkness, "but the lab has air conditioning."

The Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory (SUPL) is the only underground physics lab in the southern hemisphere and its aim is to answer one of the fundamental questions about our universe—does dark matter exist?

At the moment, despite decades of research, the existence of the dark matter particles is theoretical—but the way our universe behaves tells us something must be there.

In fact, without it, the universe as we know it may not exist at all.

According to Professor Barberio, we can only really observe about five percent of the whole universe; the rest is partly made of dark matter—invisible fundamental particles that make up the majority of matter, have no electric charge, don't produce light and don't interact very much with anything we can see.

"No matter where we are on Earth—underground or above ground—we have thousands, if not millions, of dark matter particles passing through us and they don't do anything to us. To these particles, we are transparent," says Professor Barberio.

But why is the lab at the bottom of a gold mine?

"Dark matter research needs to happen this deep underground to cut out the cosmic 'noise' and radiation. Cosmic rays are absorbed by rock, so if you go deep enough, you can reduce these to almost zero," says Professor Barberio.

Italian scientists working on the DAMA/LIBRA project claim to have detected dark matter at the Gran Sasso underground laboratory which sits inside a mountain, but the signal they detected fluctuates throughout the year, in line with Earth's seasons.

"As the Earth rotates around the Sun, dark matter particles are blown toward us by a headwind or a tailwind. If it's a headwind, there's more dark matter—if it's a tailwind there's less," says Professor Barberio.

And that's why there's the SUPL lab in the southern hemisphere, where the Italian tests can be replicated and any seasonal variations can be ruled out.

The lab itself looks a bit like a Bond villain's underground lair. Professor Barberio agrees.

"It's all part of my secret plan to take over the world." She doesn't quite pull off the evil laugh.

The major experiment going into the underground lab is known as the Sodium Iodide with Active Background Rejection Experiment South (or SABRE South for short).

The device used to detect dark matter will take up almost a third of the completely sterile lab which measures 33 meters long and 10 meters wide with a 14-meter-high ceiling.

It will use seven ultra-pure sodium iodide crystals housed in cylinders and wrapped in copper, with two very sensitive instruments, called photomultipliers, at either end.

These seven crystals—which are being grown in the United States and China—are then housed in a radiation-shielded tank filled with about 12 metric tons of a liquid called benzene.

"If the dark matter particles interact with the crystal, it produces a flash of light that will be picked up by the photomultipliers," says Professor Barberio.

"Many experiments have tried with many different elements, but it was the DAMA/LIBRA experiment in Italy using sodium iodide crystal that produced this light from what we think are interactions with dark matter."

And it's the properties of the sodium iodide that make it so sensitive.

"Dark matter interacts with the nucleus of the crystal, so the mass of the nucleus is important. Depending on the mass of dark matter, different materials will have a different sensitivity.

"So, if the dark matter is a large mass, a nucleus with a large mass will be more sensitive."

At this point, Professor Barberio notices my blank face.

"Think of a billiard ball. If you have a big billiard ball and dark matter is a much smaller billiard ball, you won't be able to move the big ball—so you won't produce a signal. But if your dark matter billiard ball is enormous, it will just crush everything.

"You need to have two billiard balls—or nuclei—that are the same size, then you get a clear signal."

SABRE will collect data for the next three years or so. For context, Italy's DAMA/LIBRA project has been gathering data for more than twenty years.

"It's a difficult experiment to reproduce, it's so sensitive.

"We just need to be able to say 'yes' or 'no' to whether we've seen the same signal as Italy, so it won't take as long.

"But if it's yes—oh gosh."

There are now five other experiments trying to verify the results of the Italian research—in Spain, Korea, Japan, Austria and the US. Which makes it feel like a bit of a race to prove the existence of dark matter.

But with the only dark matter detector in the southern hemisphere, the research team at Stawell—made up of scientists from Swinburne University of Technology, Adelaide University, the Australian National University, University of Sydney and the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), as well as the University of Melbourne—is in the box seat to make the major discovery of the century.

Professor Barberio looks outraged when I say this, and then laughs.

"Not just this century—it will be one of the biggest discoveries ever—finding out what the universe is made of."

Provided by University of Melbourne

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June 17, 2020

Physicists Announce Potential Dark Matter Breakthrough

Results from the XENON experiment in Italy hint at the possible discovery of long-sought axions

By Rafi Letzter & LiveScience

A view of the cavernous interior of the Gran Sasso National Laboratory, an underground facility in central Italy housing the Xenon Collaboration’s dark-matter detectors and many other experiments.

 Stefano Montesi Getty Images

A team of physicists has made what might be the first-ever detection of an axion.

Axions are unconfirmed, hypothetical ultralight particles from beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, which describes the behavior of  subatomic particles . Theoretical physicists first proposed the existence of axions in the 1970s in order to resolve problems in the math governing the  strong force , which binds particles called quarks together. But axions have since become a popular explanation for  dark matter , the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the mass of the universe, yet emits no light.

If confirmed, it’s not yet certain whether these axions would, in fact, fix the asymmetries in the strong force. And they wouldn’t explain most of the missing mass in the universe, said Kai Martens, a physicist at the University of Tokyo who worked on the experiment. These axions, which appear to be streaming out of the sun, don’t act like the “cold dark matter” that physicists believe fills halos around galaxies. And they would be particles newly brought into being inside the sun, while the bulk of the cold dark matter out there appears to have existed unchanged for billions of years since the early universe.*

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And it’s not certain that axions were detected at all. Despite two years of data collection, the hint of a signal is still faint compared to what physics requires to announce the discovery of a new particle. Over time, as more data comes in, Martens told Live Science, it’s still possible that the evidence of a signal may fade away to nothing.

Still, it sure seems like there was a signal. It turned up in a dark underground tank of 3.5 tons (3.2 metric tons) of liquid  xenon —the XENON1T experiment based at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy. At least two other physical effects could explain the XENON1T data. However, the researchers tested several theories and found that axions streaming out of our sun were the  likeliest  explanation for their results. 

Physicists who weren’t involved in the experiment have not reviewed the data as of the announcement at 10 a.m. ET today (June 17). Reporters were briefed on the finding before the announcement, but data and paper on the find were not made available.

Live Science shared the XENON collaboration’s press release with two axion experts.

“If this bears out, and *if* is a big question, this is the biggest game changer in my corner of physics since the discovery of cosmic acceleration,” Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire who is not part of the collaboration, told Live Science in an email.

(The discovery of cosmic acceleration in 1998 showed that not only is the universe expanding, but that rate of expansion is getting faster.)

The XENON collaboration watches for tiny flashes of light in dark, insulated xenon tanks—of which XENON1T, operated between 2016 and 2018, is the largest example yet.

Shielded underground from most radiation sources, only a handful of particles (including dark matter) might make their way into the tank and collide with the atoms in the liquid within, stimulating those flashes. Most of those flashes are easy to explain, the results of interactions with particles physicists already know about. Despite the laboratory’s underground shielding, all sorts of particles make their way down there and account for most of what XENON detectors see. XENON researchers look for “excess” flashes, more flashes than you would predict based on known particle physics, that might suggest the existence of new particles.

This is the first time a XENON detector has actually detected an excess, a spike in activity at a low-energy range that matches what physicists would expect if solar axions do exist.

Until now, XENON results have partially ruled out another type of dark matter candidate, the “weakly interacting massive particles” (WIMPS). It didn’t detect enough flashes at the energy levels most WIMPs would produce to back up their existence, effectively ruling out most possible varieties of WIMP. But the experiments haven’t turned up any evidence for new particles before.

“Although the WIMP has been the dominant DM [dark matter] paradigm for many years, the axion has been around about as long, and recent years have seen a surge in experiments looking for axions,” said Tien-Tien Yu, a physicist at The University of Oregon, who also wasn’t involved in the XENON experiment.

So, if confirmed, the axion detection would fit neatly with recent developments in dark matter research (including older XENON data) that have made the once-popular WIMPs seem like long shots.

However, Yu told Live Science that it isn’t convincing on its own.

“It would be exciting if it were true, but I am skeptical as there could be some previously unconsidered source of background,” she said. (It’s also hard to evaluate the data without seeing it, she added.)

For instance, some radioactive source might have tripped XENON1T’s sensors in ways that mimic the expected patterns of solar axions interacting with liquid xenon.

Yu pointed out that there have been unconfirmed claims of dark matter particle discoveries before. And the “solar axions” that XENON may have found don’t appear to represent true cold dark matter (which would have originated in the early universe and be “cold”), but rather hot axions produced in our sun.

(Martens said this was true, but that solar axions—which would still be never-before-detected massive particles ghosting through the universe—would still count as dark matter in many respects. He acknowledged though that they wouldn’t explain that huge bulk of missing mass.)

The XENON collaboration itself proposed three possible explanations for the effect, which it described as an “excess” of events at low energies inside the tanks.

The best fit for the excess they saw, XENON said, was indeed solar axions. They expressed a “3.5 sigma” confidence in that hypothesis.

That means, Martens said, that there’s about a 2 in 10,000 chance that random background radiation produced the signal as opposed to solar axions themselves. Typically, physicists only announce a “discovery” of a new particle if the results reach 5 sigma significance, meaning a 1 in 3.5 million chance that the signal was produced by random fluctuations.

The other possibilities they considered were less convincing, but still worth taking seriously.

There might have been undetected traces of radioactive tritium (a version of  hydrogen  with two  neutrons ) in XENON1T, causing the surrounding liquid to sparkle. The XENON team worked hard to avoid this sort of noise from the beginning, Martens said. Still, he said, the tiny levels of tritium in question here would be impossible to perfectly screen out. And with XENON1T now taken apart to build a bigger future experiment, it’s impossible to go back and check.

The tritium hypothesis fits the data to a confidence level of 3.2 sigma. Joey Neilsen, a physicist at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, who is not involved in XENON, said that corresponds to about a 1 in 700 chance that random fluctuations would have produced the signal.

It’s also possible that  neutrinos —faint, known particles from the sun that also stream through  Earth —interact more strongly with magnetic fields than expected. If that’s true, according to a statement from the XENON collaboration, neutrinos could explain the signal they’re seeing. This hypothesis also comes with a 3.2 sigma confidence level, they wrote.

But even if  neutrinos explain XENON’s result, the Standard Model of particle physics would have to be rearranged to explain the unexpected neutrino behavior, Yu pointed out.

One telltale clue would suggest whether the solar axions hypothesis should be taken seriously: seasonal changes in the data, Yu said.

“If the signal were indeed from solar axions, one would expect a modulation in the signal due to the relative position of the sun to the Earth,” she said.

As our planet gets a bit more distant from the star it orbits, the solar axion stream should weaken. As Earth gets closer to the sun, Yu said, the signal should get stronger.

Martens said that no seasonal variation is visible in the XENON1T signal. The signal is too faint, and the experiment ran too briefly at just two years, for XENON1T to have picked it up.

Physicists will likely treat the XENON1T results as preliminary for the near future. An upcoming, larger XENON experiment called XENONnt, still under construction in Italy, should offer clearer statistics once completed, the team said. Further experiments underway or under construction in the United States and China will add to the existing data.

One hope, Martens said, is that seasonal variation will emerge from the data when the more sensitive XENONnt’s detector has finished its e 5-year run. That would strongly stack the deck in favor of solar axions, he said. And then all the international experiments might combine their raw xenon (drawing on a substantial chunk of the global supply) to build a 30-ton detector. Maybe then it will be possible to study this signal in detail (if it’s real) or detect other dark particles.

So these results are still preliminary. Still, Prescod-Weinstein said, there’s been plenty of buzz in the physics community in advance of the announcement.

“If this bears out, this is a big deal,” she wrote. “I’m hesitant to commentate on the strength of the data without having time to examine the results and discuss with peers. Of course I’d prefer a 5 sigma result!”

Copyright 2020  LiveScience.com , a Future company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

* Editor’s Note (6/17/20): Our partners at Live Science have edited this paragraph after posting to reflect a clarification from Kai Martens. Martens said that while solar axions might not fix the asymmetry in the strong force, it’s also possible that they would fix that asymmetry.

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Are scientists about to unveil the mysteries of dark matter?

Dark matter, making up about 80% of the universe, remains a mystery to scientists — the hadron collider could change that..

By Art Raymond

The world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator was fired up Tuesday for the first time since completing a 3 1 ⁄ 2 -year pause for upgrades, and scientists say the advancements will lead to a trove of new information and insight about the smallest building blocks of the world around us.

And this time around, the nearly 17-mile circle of superconducting magnets that make up the Large Hadron Collider, built 328 feet underground at a site near Geneva, Switzerland, and operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research, could help unlock some of the secrets to the elusive material that occupies some 80% of the universe but about which very little is known — dark matter.

What the heck is a collider? On Tuesday, the Large Hadron Collider began its third testing “run” since going into operation in 2008. The device uses a series of very powerful magnets to accelerate beams of particles to very near the speed of light before causing the beams to collide with each other or a stationery target.

The process reproduces conditions that existed within a billionth of a second of the  Big Bang , according to Space.com . The colossal accelerator allows scientists to collide high-energy subatomic particles in a controlled environment and observe the interactions. One of the most significant breakthroughs for the collider came in 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs boson , a fundamental particle associated with the Higgs field, a phenomena that gives mass to other fundamental particles such as electrons and quarks.

University of Utah physics professor Pearl Sandick said the discovery was a game-changing moment for the field.

“The discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 began a new era for particle physics,” Sandick said. “It’s unlike any particle that had previously been observed, and we still have a lot to learn about its properties and how it and any other new elementary particles are related to the known particles of the Standard Model .”

And, the Higgs boson discovery itself is informing fresh ideas about the nature of dark matter and guiding the new round of testing at the Large Hadron Collider in a way that could lead to significant new revelations.

What we don’t know about dark matter is a lot. It’s an astounding fact that the vast majority of matter in the  universe  is actually invisible to us, per Space.com. Astronomers think that  dark matter must be present because they see its  gravitational  fingerprints. Dark matter is the invisible cosmic scaffold that holds together  galaxies  and  galaxy clusters . We just don’t know what it is.

Sandick notes the nature of dark matter remains one of the most compelling scientific mysteries.

“The identity of dark matter is viewed as one of the most important outstanding questions in modern physics,” Sandick said. “If dark matter is a new type of particle (or particles), that would give us incredible insight about the nature of physics beyond the Standard Model. 

“But by virtue of its ‘darkness,’ dark matter is very hard to detect. It rarely interacts with the Standard Model particles, making it challenging to discern its presence in a particle detector.”  

Intriguingly, Space.com reports, experiments on the smallest scales at the Large Hadron Collider could hold the key to figuring out one of the largest-scale cosmological mysteries of all. 

“Since the discovery of the  Higgs boson , the field of dark matter has changed completely,” Gian Giudice, who leads the theoretical division at CERN , told a press conference at the end of June. 

Ten years ago, the lead contender for the identity of dark matter was a class of particles known as weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPS for short, according to reporting by Space.com. These would be particles with large masses — hence dark matter’s strong gravitational pull — but which otherwise would only weakly interact, or ‘couple,’ with other particles.

“The experimental data from the LHC has since changed things,” added Giudice. “Our new theoretical ideas have widened our horizons.”

A massive, collaborative effort to engage in science for peace. The European Organization for Nuclear Research , still known by its original French acronym, CERN, was formed by 12 European nations still rebuilding and recovering from the impacts of WWII in the early 1950s.

CERN has since grown to 23 countries and some 12,000 scientists who operate under principles established by its founders some 70 years ago as an organization that “shall have no concern with work for military requirements and the results of its experimental and theoretical work shall be published or otherwise made generally available.”

CERN built its first accelerator in 1957 and by 1971, the science had advanced to include particle collisions.

In just the first day of operations of the Large Hadron Collider’s “Run 3” experiments led to the discovery of three new “exotic” particles that could provide further insight into the forces that hold subatomic particles together, according to a CERN report.

CERN says the organization’s work will continue to focus on “advancing the boundaries of human knowledge by delving into the smallest building blocks of our universe.”

CERN Accelerating science

Dark matter

Invisible dark matter makes up most of the universe – but we can only detect it from its gravitational effects

Galaxies in our universe seem to be achieving an impossible feat. They are rotating with such speed that the gravity generated by their observable matter could not possibly hold them together; they should have torn themselves apart long ago. The same is true of galaxies in clusters, which leads scientists to believe that something we cannot see is at work. They think something we have yet to detect directly is giving these galaxies extra mass, generating the extra gravity they need to stay intact. This strange and unknown matter was called “dark matter” since it is not visible.

Unlike normal matter, dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force. This means it does not absorb, reflect or emit light, making it extremely hard to spot. In fact, researchers have been able to infer the existence of dark matter only from the gravitational effect it seems to have on visible matter. Dark matter seems to outweigh visible matter roughly six to one, making up about 27% of the universe. Here's a sobering fact: The matter we know and that makes up all stars and galaxies only accounts for 5% of the content of the universe! But what is dark matter? One idea is that it could contain "supersymmetric particles" – hypothesized particles that are partners to those already known in the Standard Model . Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider  (LHC) may provide more direct clues about dark matter.

Many theories say the dark matter particles would be light enough to be produced at the LHC. If they were created at the LHC, they would escape through the detectors unnoticed. However, they would carry away energy and momentum, so physicists could infer their existence from the amount of energy and momentum “missing” after a collision. Dark matter candidates arise frequently in theories that suggest physics beyond the Standard Model, such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions. One theory suggests the existence of a “Hidden Valley”, a parallel world made of dark matter having very little in common with matter we know. If one of these theories proved to be true, it could help scientists gain a better understanding of the composition of our universe and, in particular, how galaxies hold together.

Dark energy

Dark energy makes up approximately 68% of the universe and appears to be associated with the vacuum in space. It is distributed evenly throughout the universe, not only in space but also in time – in other words, its effect is not diluted as the universe expands. The even distribution means that dark energy does not have any local gravitational effects, but rather a global effect on the universe as a whole. This leads to a repulsive force, which tends to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The rate of expansion and its acceleration can be measured by observations based on the Hubble law. These measurements, together with other scientific data, have confirmed the existence of dark energy and provide an estimate of just how much of this mysterious substance exists.

BHSU Secures $997,522 DOE Grant for Dark Matter Research

• BHSU Communications
• 12 September 2024

Black Hills State University (BHSU) has been awarded a $997,522 grant by the U.S. Department of Energy for research in high energy physics, specifically the direct detection of dark matter, an invisible substance that scientists believe makes up most of the mass in our universe. The project, led by Dr. Brianna Mount, associate professor of Physics and director of the BHSU Underground Campus (BHUC), will span four years and involve collaboration between BHSU, Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. 

The project’s focus is to advance the search for dark matter through increased contributions to the data analysis of the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment from the BHSU group and ensure that construction materials used in next-generation detection experiments only contain limited amounts of background radiation, which could overwhelm dark matter signals. The project also seeks to increase the participation of Native American undergraduate students in science at SURF.  

"The exciting recent results from LZ make it the world-leading WIMP-detector,” said Dr. Mount. “This award allows BHSU faculty and staff to increase their contributions to the LZ experiment, allows BHSU to continue to be a leader in low-background counting for XLZD, which is the next-generation WIMP search experiment, and strengthens its strong partnership with Berkeley Lab.” 

The grant will fund a postdoctoral researcher who will focus on both maintaining low-radioactivity environments and analyzing data from the LZ experiment. Additionally, the project will support two undergraduate researchers each year, offering them hands-on experience in physics research and valuable exposure to leading research facilities. Additionally, two undergraduates will travel each year to the Bay Area to tour Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory to meet with researchers there.   

Research will be conducted at the BHUC, a specialized underground laboratory operated by BHSU and housed on the 4850 Level of SURF. The facility is equipped to detect extremely low levels of radioactivity and will play a key role in improving the sensitivity of dark matter experiments.  

This award is part of $36 million that was provided to 39 research projects in 19 states via the DOE’s Establish Program to Simulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). The new projects span a wide range of energy research topics, including fundamental work in chemistry and materials science for clean energy, fusion energy, advanced computing, biological and environmental research, high energy and nuclear physics, as well as early-stage R&D for advanced manufacturing, solar energy, vehicles, wind, nuclear power, and carbon management. Projects were chosen by competitive peer review under a DOE Funding Opportunity Announcement for Building EPSCoR-State/National Laboratory Partnerships. 

“The EPSCoR program is an important component of the effort to ensure that all regions of the country can perform competitive and impactful energy-relevant research,” said Harriet Kung, Acting Director of the DOE Office of Science. “These projects will enhance the scientific expertise and capabilities at the EPSCoR institutions and strengthen their connections to the unique capabilities and expertise at the DOE national laboratories.” 

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Huge underground search for mysterious dark matter begins in South Dakota

July 7, 2022 / 6:20 PM EDT / AP

In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare liquified gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable : dark matter.

Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe's mass and say we wouldn't be here without it — but they don't know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota.

The question for scientists is basic, says Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "What is this great place I live in? Right now, 95% of it is a mystery."

The idea is that a mile of dirt and rock, a giant tank, a second tank and the purest titanium in the world will block nearly all the cosmic rays and particles that zip around — and through — all of us every day. But dark matter particles, scientists think, can avoid all those obstacles. They hope one will fly into the vat of liquid xenon in the inner tank and smash into a xenon nucleus like two balls in a game of pool, revealing its existence in a flash of light seen by a device called "the time projection chamber."

Scientists announced Thursday that the five-year, $60 million search finally got underway two months ago after a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. So far the device has found ... nothing. At least no dark matter.

That's OK, they say. The equipment appears to be working to filter out most of the background radiation they hoped to block. "To search for this very rare type of interaction, job number one is to first get rid of all of the ordinary sources of radiation, which would overwhelm the experiment," said University of Maryland physicist Carter Hall.

And if all their calculations and theories are right, they figure they'll see only a couple fleeting signs of dark matter a year. The team of 250 scientists estimates they'll get 20 times more data over the next couple of years.

By the time the experiment finishes, the chance of finding dark matter with this device is "probably less than 50% but more than 10%," said Hugh Lippincott, a physicist and spokesman for the experiment in a Thursday news conference.

While that's far from a sure thing, "you need a little enthusiasm," Lawrence Berkeley's Lesko said. "You don't go into rare search physics without some hope of finding something."

Two hulking Depression-era hoists run an elevator that brings scientists to what's called the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment in the Sanford Underground Research Facility. A 10-minute descent ends in a tunnel with cool-to-the-touch walls lined with netting. But the old, musty mine soon leads to a high-tech lab where dirt and contamination is the enemy. Helmets are exchanged for new cleaner ones and a double layer of baby blue booties go over steel-toed safety boots.

The heart of the experiment is the giant tank called the cryostat, lead engineer Jeff Cherwinka said in a December 2019 tour before the device was closed and filled. He described it as "like a thermos" made of "perhaps the purest titanium in the world" designed to keep the liquid xenon cold and keep background radiation at a minimum.

Xenon is special, explained experiment physics coordinator Aaron Manalaysay, because it allows researchers to see if a collision is with one of its electrons or with its nucleus. If something hits the nucleus, it is more likely to be the dark matter that everyone is looking for, he said.

These scientists tried a similar, smaller experiment here years ago. After coming up empty, they figured they had to go much bigger. Another large-scale experiment is underway in Italy run by a rival team, but no results have been announced so far.

The scientists are trying to understand why the universe is not what it seems.

One part of the mystery is dark matter, which has by far most of the mass in the cosmos. Astronomers know it's there because when they measure the stars and other regular matter in galaxies, they find that there is not nearly enough gravity to hold these clusters together. If nothing else was out there, galaxies would be "quickly flying apart," Manalaysay said.

"It is essentially impossible to understand our observation of history, of the evolutionary cosmos without dark matter," Manalaysay said.

Lippincott, a University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist, said "we would not be here without dark matter."

So while there's little doubt that dark matter exists, there's lots of doubt about what it is. The leading theory is that it involves things called WIMPs — weakly interacting massive particles.

If that's the case, LUX-ZEPLIN could be able to detect them. We want to find "where the wimps can be hiding," Lippincott said.

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An Antimatter Experiment Shows Surprises Near Absolute Zero

March 16, 2022

In antiprotonic helium, one of the helium atom’s two electrons has been replaced by an antiproton.

Tony Melov / Science Source

Introduction

For decades, researchers have toyed with antimatter while searching for new laws of physics. These laws would come in the form of forces or other phenomena that would strongly favor matter over antimatter, or vice versa. Yet physicists have found nothing amiss, no conclusive sign that antimatter particles — which are just the oppositely charged twins of familiar particles — obey different rules.

That hasn’t changed. But while pursuing precision antimatter experiments, one team stumbled upon a puzzling finding. When bathed in liquid helium, hybrid atoms made from both matter and antimatter misbehave. Whereas buffeting from the stew would throw the properties of most atoms into disarray, hybrid helium atoms maintain an unlikely uniformity. The discovery was so unexpected that the research team spent years checking their work, redoing the experiment, and arguing about what might be going on. Finally convinced that their result is real, the group detailed their findings today in Nature .

“It’s very exciting,” said Mikhail Lemeshko , an atomic physicist at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria who was not involved with the research. He anticipates that the result will lead to a new way to capture and scrutinize elusive forms of matter. “Their community will find more exciting possibilities to trap exotic things.”

Chill Antiprotons

One way to gauge the properties of atoms and their components is to tickle them with a laser and see what happens, a technique called laser spectroscopy. A laser beam with just the right energy, for instance, can briefly push an electron to a higher energy level. When it returns to its previous energy level, the electron emits light of a particular wavelength. “This is, if you want, the color of the atom,” said Masaki Hori , a physicist at the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics who uses spectroscopy to study antimatter.

In an ideal world, experimentalists would see every single hydrogen atom, say, shining with the same sharp hues. An atom’s “spectral lines” reveal natural constants, such as the electron’s charge or how much lighter the electron is than the proton, with extreme precision.

But ours is a flawed world. Atoms careen about, crashing into neighboring atoms in chaotic ways. The constant jostling deforms the atoms, messing with their electrons — and therefore the host atom’s energy levels. Shine a laser at the distorted particles and each atom will respond idiosyncratically. The cohort’s crisp intrinsic colors get lost in rainbowlike smears.

Spectroscopy practitioners like Hori spend their careers fighting this “broadening” of spectral lines. For instance, they might employ thinner gases where atomic collisions will be rarer — and energy levels will stay more pristine.

That’s why a hobby project of Anna Sótér , at the time a graduate student of Hori’s, initially seemed counterintuitive.

In 2013, Sótér was working at the CERN laboratory on an antimatter experiment . The group would assemble hybrid matter-antimatter atoms by firing antiprotons into liquid helium. Antiprotons are the negatively charged twins of protons, so an antiproton could occasionally take an electron’s place orbiting a helium nucleus. The result was a small cohort of “antiprotonic helium” atoms.

Anna Sótér at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland.

Courtesy of the Paul Scherrer Institute/Scanderbeg Sauer Photography

The project was designed to see if spectroscopy in a helium bath was possible at all — a proof of concept for future experiments that would use even more exotic hybrid atoms.

But Sótér was curious about how the hybrid atoms would react to different temperatures of helium. She convinced the collaboration to spend precious antimatter repeating the measurements inside increasingly chilly helium baths.

“It was a random idea from my side,” said Sótér, now a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich. “People were not convinced it was worth it to waste antiprotons on it.”

Where the spectral lines of most atoms would have gone completely haywire in the increasingly dense fluid, widening perhaps a million times, the Frankenstein atoms did the opposite. As the researchers lowered the helium bath to icier temperatures, the spectral smudge narrowed. And below about 2.2 kelvins, where helium becomes a frictionless “superfluid,” they saw a line nearly as sharp as the tightest they had seen in helium gas. Despite presumably taking a battering from the dense surroundings, the hybrid matter-antimatter atoms were acting in improbable unison.

Unsure what to make of the experiment, Sótér and Hori sat on the result while they mulled over what could have gone wrong.

“We continued to argue for many years,” Hori said. “It was not so easy for me to understand why this was the case.”

A Close Call

In time, the researchers concluded that nothing had gone awry. The tight spectral line showed that the hybrid atoms in superfluid helium aren’t experiencing atomic collisions in the billiard-ball manner that’s typical in a gas. The question was why. After consulting with various theorists, the researchers landed on two possible reasons.

One involves the nature of the liquid surroundings. The atomic spectrum abruptly tightened when the group chilled the helium into a superfluid state, a quantum mechanical phenomenon where individual atoms lose their identity in a way that permits them to flow together without rubbing against one another. Superfluidity takes the edge off atomic collisions in general, so researchers expect foreign atoms to experience only mild broadening or even a limited amount of tightening in some cases. “Superfluid helium,” Lemeshko said, “is the softest known thing you can immerse atoms and molecules into.”

But while superfluid helium may have helped the hybrid atoms become their most isolationist selves, that alone can’t explain just how well-behaved the atoms were. Another key to their conformity, the researchers believe, was their unusual structure, one brought about by their antimatter component.

In a normal atom, a tiny electron can venture far from its host atom, especially when excited by a laser. On such a loose leash, the electron can easily bump into other atoms, disturbing its atom’s intrinsic energy levels (and leading to spectral broadening).

When Sótér and her colleagues swapped zippy electrons for lumbering antiprotons, they drastically changed the atom’s dynamics. The massive antiproton is much more of a homebody, staying close to the nucleus where the outer electron can shelter it. “The electron is like a force field,” Hori said, “like a shield.”

Still, this rough theory only goes so far. The researchers still cannot explain why the spectral broadening reversed as they switched from gas to liquid to superfluid, and they have no way to calculate the degree of tightening. “You need to be predictive, otherwise it’s not a theory,” Hori said. “It’s just hand-waving.”

Super Tools

In the meantime, the discovery has opened up a new realm for spectroscopy.

There are limits to what experimentalists can measure using low-pressure gases, where atoms zoom around. This frantic motion creates more of the distracting broadening, which researchers combat by slowing the atoms down with lasers and electromagnetic fields.

Sticking atoms in a liquid is a simpler way of holding them relatively still, now that researchers know that getting particles wet won’t necessarily wreck their spectral lines. And antiprotons are just one species of exotic particle that can get placed in orbit around a helium nucleus.

Hori’s group has already applied the technique to fabricate and study “pionic” helium, in which an extremely short-lived “pion” particle replaces an electron. The researchers have made the first spectroscopic measurements of pionic helium, which they described in Nature in 2020. Next, Hori hopes to use the method to bring the kaon particle (a rarer relative of the pion) and the antimatter version of a proton-neutron pair to heel. Such experiments may allow the physicists to measure certain fundamental constants with unprecedented precision.

“This is a new capability that didn’t exist before,” Hori said.

Editor’s note: Natalie Wolchover contributed reporting to this article.

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Do black lives matter to employers? A combined field and natural experiment of racially disparate hiring practices in the wake of protests against police violence and racial oppression

David S. Kirk

Department of Sociology & Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

Marti Rovira

Associated data.

Our study is registered on Open Science Framework ( https://osf.io/p8je9/registrations ), where our data and Stata code is archived.

This study uses an experimental audit design, implemented both before and during the heightened unrest following the murder of George Floyd, to gauge the impact of Black Lives Matter and associated protests against police brutality and anti-Black racism on racially disparate hiring practices. We contrast treatment of fictitious Black and White job applicants in the labor market for service-related job openings, specifically applicants with prior experience as a police officer, firefighter, or code enforcement officer. Results reveal that the White advantage in employer call-backs and requests for an interview receded during the protests and unrest following the killing of George Floyd, even to the point of producing a Black advantage.

Introduction

Recent high-profile cases of police violence, notably the murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by White Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May of 2020, prompted an intensity and frequency of protests and political activism against anti-Black racism arguably not seen since the civil rights era [ 1 , 2 ]. Our study is motivated by an interest in understanding the political and social implications of this reckoning on racial injustice. Whereas several studies have examined the effects of police violence and resulting protests on public opinion and attitudinal change about both the police and racial injustice, we specifically seek to examine behavior change, even if temporary [ 3 – 6 ].

To gauge the impact of nationwide protests against police violence, and to understand the extent to which “black lives matter,” in this case to employers, we conducted an audit experiment to determine if employers were any more or less likely to discriminate against Black job applicants. Audit studies are a type of field experiment used to test for discriminatory behavior, typically in studies of employment or housing discrimination [ 7 ]. Whereas an expansive empirical literature has developed over the past two decades using audit and related correspondence experiments to examine employment discrimination [ 8 – 10 ], only recently have a small number of studies similar to ours leveraged a natural experiment with an audit experiment to examine how rates of employment discrimination may change in response to policy or exogenous shocks [ 11 – 13 ]. However, none of these studies of employment discrimination have examined the context of an exogenous shock associated with police violence and resulting social protests against racial injustice.

We implemented our audit experiment in two waves, before and then during the heightened unrest associated with the murder of George Floyd. For our experiment, we submitted fictitious résumés to real service-related job openings posted on Indeed.com and Craigslist, using racially distinctive names to signal race, and then recorded whether a given job applicant received an affirmative response from the employer to interview for the position or to discuss the job (via a voicemail, text, or email). Analyses to follow focus on whether the gap in response rates between Black and White individuals varied significantly from the period prior to Mr. Floyd’s murder to the period immediately following his murder.

Theoretical background

Our study of the effects of political protest in response to lethal police violence is grounded in two literatures. First, our study is informed and motivated by work on the role of the police as an instrument of oppression against ethnic communities [ 14 , 15 ]. As social scientists have importantly ascertained, in many marginalized communities, the police are the face of the government, and interactions with the police represent the primary way residents interact with the state. The protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder were a response not merely to the murder, but to the continued marginalization and subjugation of Black communities by state actors, particularly the police [ 15 ]. Our contribution to this literature is to examine whether the occurrence of George Floyd’s murder, and the mobilization against state oppression and racial injustice that followed, yielded gains for marginalized communities, in this case in the realm of employment.

Second, our study is grounded in sociological theorizing on race relations and racial prejudice, particularly work by Herbert Blumer [ 16 , 17 ]. In his group threat theory, Blumer (p.4) characterizes four feelings at root of prejudice by a dominant group: (1) a feeling of superiority, (2) a feeling that the subordinate race is intrinsically different and alien, (3) a feeling of proprietary claim to certain areas of privilege and advantage, and (4) a fear and suspicion that the subordinate race harbors designs on the prerogatives of the dominant race [ 16 ]. These feelings can help us disentangle whether to expect progress on race relations following large-scale social protests, or perhaps a backlash, as has been a common narrative about the fallout from the civil rights protests of the 1960s [ 5 , 18 , 19 ].

To Blumer, prejudice is relational, and derives from a perceived challenge to group position. Importantly, but perhaps obviously, perceived group position is not static. Because group position and race relations are dynamic, Blumer theorized a process of “collective definition” to understand the ways in which groups form views about relative group positions of dominant and subordinate groups [ 16 , 17 ]. Quillian and Midtbøen characterize Blumer’s theory as a situational theory of discrimination, and suggest that the extent of discrimination against an outgroup depends on contemporary social forces [ 7 ]. Pertinent to the current study, Blumer and Duster (p.131) argue that this process of assessment and reassessment of race relations is “profoundly influenced by highly-dramatic events,” such as “well-publicized brutal police action against members of a racial group” [ 17 ]. Prompted by police violence and a rising consciousness of stark racial inequalities in society, superordinate groups may be confronted by an antagonistic pair of forces, one involving action to maintain social advantages through exclusion practices and the other a “gate-opening orientation” in which the barriers to an equal and equitable society are lowered, even if temporarily [ 17 ]. For instance, increasing awareness of racial injustices may lead superordinate groups to reconsider its “feeling of proprietary claim to certain areas of privilege and advantage” (p.4), thereby opening up access to subordinate groups to some of the advantages of their position [ 16 ]. Indeed, one reason we draw upon group threat theory to situate our study over other explanations for employment discrimination (e.g., racial prejudice, implicit bias, organizational and institutional theories) is that group threat may be able to explain relatively abrupt shifts in discriminatory practices whereas other perspectives may predict slower change.

Despite the appeal of group threat theory for examining discrimination in the wake of exogenous shocks associated with ethnic relations, a recent study of the potential reduction in employment discrimination against Muslims casts doubt on whether highly-dramatic events can really lower barriers to a more equitable society. In their study of the anti-Muslim terrorist attacks by Anders Breivik in Norway in 2011, Birkelund and colleagues use two waves of an audit experiment to determine if employment discrimination against individuals of Pakistani descent declined as solidarity with Muslims purportedly grew following the attacks [ 12 ]. However, they do not find evidence that employment discrimination against Pakistanis changed from before to three to five months after the attack. The authors acknowledge, however, that they were unable to examine labor market practices immediately after the terrorist attack (i.e., less than three months), so it possible that there may have been a very short-term reduction in employment discrimination against Pakistani job applicants, which had reverted to pre-existing levels within three months.

Whereas our research and the study by Birkelund and colleagues both examine the potential “gate-opening” effect of dramatic events on ethnic discrimination in hiring practices, research reveals support for the counter situation, where a threatening event reinforces racially discriminatory hiring practices [ 12 ]. Specifically, Mobasseri has shown how exposure to violent crimes occurring proximate to employers exacerbates disparate hiring practices against Black job applicants [ 13 ]. While both the Mobasseri and Birkelund et al. studies are highly informative, it remains to be seen if recent protests in response to police violence in the United States yield the type of gate-opening effect theorized by Blumer and Duster [ 12 , 13 , 16 ].

The foregoing discussion leads us to the following hypothesis. We expect that in the period immediately after George Floyd’s murder and the eruption of protests nationwide, employment discrimination against Black applicants declined relative to the period prior to Mr. Floyd’s death. The basis of our expectation is that the murder and protests sparked a reckoning on race relations as well as rising support for Black Lives Matter and an increased perception of anti-Black discrimination among some groups [ 6 , 20 ]. In turn, employers consciously or unconsciously reduced barriers to employment opportunities for Black applicants.

In this study, we combine a randomized audit experiment and natural experiment to examine the extent to which employment discrimination at the point of hiring is malleable, in this case in response to an exogenous shock associated with widely publicized police violence. Our design is a version of an audit experiment known as an online correspondence test, in which we applied to online job advertisements.

We submitted job applications in two time periods: (1) prior to the murder of George Floyd (May 2019 to March 2020, N = 1210) and (2) immediately following Mr. Floyd’s murder (June 4, 2020 to July 16, 2020, N = 424). The combination of the size, intensity, and frequency of protests against police brutality and racial injustice following Mr. Floyd’s murder were, according to experts, “unprecedented,” underscoring the potential for differential treatment of job applicants by race in the second time period relative to the first [ 1 ].

Whereas we randomly assigned the race of applicants to job openings, applications were unmatched by race, such that Black and White candidates were not applying to the same jobs. Hence, in contrast to many audit studies of racially discriminatory employment practices, in which one Black auditor and one White auditor apply for the same position, we do not employ a matched-pairs design by race (although, as described in the next subsection, we do use a matched design by prior profession). This decision to not use a paired design by race was based on resource constraints and ethical reasons, in that we sought to minimize the number of jobs to which we applied. We note that methodological work on audit designs suggests that in some cases, unmatched designs may be more statistically efficient than matched designs [ 21 , 22 ].

Prior profession

We constructed the fictitious résumés so that an applicant’s most recent profession was as a police officer, firefighter, or code enforcement officer, with approximately three years of experience in these professions and departure from the job within the month preceding the application for a new job (with the reason for the departure unspecified). Our motivation for listing these professions on our résumés was to examine whether certain occupational choices may be stigmatized in the labor market, particularly when an applicant seeks to switch careers. Given the ongoing challenge of lethal police violence in the United States, our larger project is partially focused on the potential stigmatization of the police in the labor market. For instance, some employers may view experience as a police officer as a signal that the individual holds prejudicial views or may be overly aggressive and controlling. Whereas our study was motivated from the start to examine the potential stigma of policing, we certainly could not anticipate the tragic events in Minneapolis or the magnitude of the protest activity that followed.

The focus on policing as a prior profession allows us to disentangle whether any changes over time in employer responses to Black and White job applicants reflects changing levels of discrimination against Black applicants, or perhaps more reluctance and declining preferences for hiring particular White applicants (i.e., White police officers). We chose firefighting and code enforcement for comparison occupational backgrounds given their similarity in skillsets to police officers, at least with respect to the applicability of skills for our sampled jobs. That being said, in a forthcoming research note using the same data employed here, we do not find evidence that former police officers are treated any differently in the labor market following widespread protests against police violence, although that article does not focus on the question of race differences in employment [ 23 ].

When applying for each given job, we submitted job applications from two applicants, one a former police officer paired with a second application from either a former firefighter or code enforcement officer. Candidates for a particular job had the same racial background (i.e., both applicants were either White or Black) and gender, and both race and gender were randomly assigned to job openings. The number of job applications by prior profession, race, and gender can be seen in Table 1 .

Sampled metropolitan areas and block randomization

We sampled employers in two Northeastern metropolitan areas, Boston and Philadelphia, effectively implementing both waves of the experiment separately in blocks defined by location. We originally intended to sample employers from two metro areas in each region of the country in order to more fully assess whether racial gaps in employer responses varied by city and region, but resource constraints and the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic ultimately prevented us from extending the study beyond the Northeast. Using data from the Fatal Encounters repository on police killings ( http://www.fatalencounters.org/ ), we categorized primary cities in each of the metro areas in the Northeast with more than one million population as either having low or high rates of police violence. We did so by ranking the cities based on the rate of deaths by the police from 2013 to 2017 and splitting the list at the median. We then randomly selected one metro area to sample from the bottom half (Boston) and one from the top half (Philadelphia) of the distribution in terms of rates of police violence. We only sampled large metro areas in order to ensure a sufficiently large number of potential jobs for which to apply, and to avoid diluting the job market with fictitious applications.

Selection of names

Whereas our broader project included a focus on potential stigma from a prior profession, our primary focus in the current study is disparate employer responses to applicant race. We signaled race through first and last names used on résumés, on online job application forms, and in emailed applications, as follows:

• ○ Black male: Jabari Washington (prior experience as a police officer), Tremayne Jefferson (firefighter), and Darnell Mosley (code enforcement officer);
• ○ White male: Ethan Becker (police), Ryan Walsh (fire), and Jake Meyer (code enforcement);
• ○ Black female: Shanice Jefferson (police), Erykah Jackson (fire), and Janae Booker (code enforcement);
• ○ White female: Claire McGrath (police), Emily Decker (fire), and Katelyn Hartman (code enforcement).

Our selection of putatively Black and White names was guided by prior methodological work on audit studies, particularly work by Gaddis [ 24 ]. The extent to which these names solely signal race rather than additional characteristics such as socioeconomic status is an important consideration for assessing the validity of our inferences about racial discrimination [ 24 , 25 ]. Accordingly, we provide a detailed rationale for our selection of these names in our S1 File .

Characteristics of fictitious applicants

We developed applicant profiles and corresponding résumés to ensure similarity across background characteristics, but without exactly duplicating pieces of information or résumé style. For educational background, applicants had graduated high school, but with no further education thereafter. Prior to becoming a police officer, firefighter, or code enforcement officer, our fictitious applicants worked as delivery drivers and as sales clerks/cashiers in retail businesses, for approximately 2.5 years total. Combined with 3 years of experience as police officers, firefighters, or code enforcement officers, our applicants had about 5.5 years of work experience following high school. Specific elements of the résumés (e.g., addresses, high school attended, graduation month, prior jobs, and skills) were randomized for each job opening.

Characteristics of targeted jobs and employers

We submitted fictitious résumés to four different categories of service-related jobs posted on Indeed.com and Craigslist.com : (1) skilled trades, (2) transportation, 3) sales, and (4) office and customer support. We expected that for these four occupations, former police officers, firefighters, and code enforcement officers would be similarly qualified, as would individuals of different racial groups. Where information was available on job postings, we targeted jobs with a salary approximately 1.5 times the living wage in the metropolitan area.

We sampled newly listed job openings occurring within the preceding week. We did not apply to jobs requiring a social security number, nor did we sample jobs requiring an immediate online qualification, psychological test, or automated video interview. We only applied to one job opening per employer. For companies with multiple branches and sites, we only applied to one position per branch. We sampled jobs on Indeed.com and Craigslist by convenience, as opposed to a random sample of all recently posted job openings.

As noted, when applying for jobs we submitted job applications from two applicants, one a former police officer and then either a former firefighter or code enforcement officer. We randomized the order of the application—i.e., whether the first application was sent from the former police officer or the firefighter/code enforcement officer. We submitted the second application on the same day, approximately three to five hours after the first submission.

Randomization procedure

As described in preceding paragraphs, we used randomization across several aspects of our experimental design. To summarize, we randomized: (1) the information placed on résumés and cover letters, (2) the control condition used for a given job (i.e., firefighter or code enforcement officer), (3) the order of the paired applications (i.e., whether the application from the former police officer was first or second), and (4) the demographic profile of the applicants for a given job (i.e., Black males, Black females, White males, or White females). Specifically, for each month of data collection, we used Lahey and Beasley’s Resume Randomizer program to create 100 different batches of résumés for each demographic combination of fictitious job applicants (i.e., Black male, Black female, White male, and White female) and metropolitan area (Boston and Philadelphia) [ 26 ]. For each batch, we created two résumés, one for a police officer and another for a control condition (firefighter or code enforcement officer). Which control condition to include in the batch was assigned randomly by the Resume Randomizer program. We randomly assigned which batch (i.e., from 1 to 100) of the paired résumés to use when applying for a particular job using the Excel function RANDBETWEEN . We also randomly assigned the order of applications (i.e., whether the former police officer applied for the job first or second) using the RANDBETWEEN function.

Outcome variable

Each experimental profile had an email account and a unique phone number, which could receive texts and voicemails. Our binary outcome variable measures whether the fictitious applicant received an affirmative response from the employer to set-up an interview or to discuss the job opening. We excluded immediate auto-generated responses acknowledging receipt of the job application.

For estimation, we use linear probability models (LPMs). For probabilities in the range of 0.20 to 0.80, as is generally the case of the callback rates in our audit study, the LPM is a very close approximation to the logistic model, with both models fitting similarly well [ 27 ]. In this case, one might favor the LPM, as we do here, because of its ease of interpretation [ 28 , 29 ]. Beyond ease of interpretation, another reason to estimate LPMs is to facilitate examination of possible heterogeneous effects by time period and by prior profession [ 29 ]. In a logit or probit model, interaction effects are conditional on other independent variables, undermining clear interpretation. Nevertheless, we replicated our analyses using a logit model with highly similar results, which can be found in S1 Table in S1 File .

For the analysis, our data is structured such that there is one record per applicant. As two applicants applied for each position, a police officer and either a firefighter or code enforcement officer, we constructed a job ID indicator that is duplicated across the two applicants who applied for a given job. In our LPMs, we cluster our standard errors by these paired job IDs.

Models include the location of the job (Boston vs. Philadelphia), the online site advertising the job (Craigslist vs. Indeed.com ), job type (skilled trades, transportation, sales, and office and customer support), and month and day of the week of the job application as control variables, in addition to treatment and control variables already mentioned (i.e., race, time period, prior profession, and gender).

Methodological limitations

It is important to recognize that the time duration of our audit experiment overlaps the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of the pandemic, the labor market in the year leading up to Mr. Floyd’s death (i.e., our first time period) was dissimilar to the labor market after his death (i.e., time period 2). For instance, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average unemployment rate in Boston was 2.65% in the first time period of our study (May 2019 to March 2020), and 5.85% in Philadelphia. In the second time period, June and July 2020, the average unemployment rate was 12.1% in Boston and 18.95% in Philadelphia. Hence, we suggest that comparisons related to the level of employment across time periods be interpreted cautiously.

However, our emphasis in the study is on the White-Black difference in employer call-backs, rather than on the level of employer responses. Research suggests that the costs to employers for discriminating will be higher in a tight labor market with few suitable job applicants [ 30 , 31 ]. Conversely, there may be less cost to discriminating employers in a slack labor market. Hence, we might expect that during the early stages of the pandemic, employers would have been more likely to discriminate against Black applicants given slack in the market. Should we find that the White-Black gap in employer call-backs narrowed following the protests from Mr. Floyd’s murder, the reduction may be less than in might have been in a “normal” labor market not characterized by pandemic-induced slack.

A possible limitation of our study is the convenience sampling strategy we employed. We sampled recently posted jobs on Indeed.com and Craigslist by convenience rather than conducting a random sample of all recently posted job openings. Moreover, our design focuses on entry-level service-related jobs, particularly those with a routine demand for new employees [ 32 ]. These jobs represent just a fraction of the labor market, and the nature of recruitment for these jobs may result in typically lower levels of discrimination than in other sectors. For instance, per our discussion above about slack vs. tight labor markets, given the frequent demand for qualified workers in the skilled trades, delivery and transportation, sales, and office and customer support, discrimination rates may be lower than with other jobs because there is often a shortage of workers. The implication is that in various ways, our results may not fully generalize to the population of jobs in a labor market. Of course, this limitation is true across all audit studies of labor market discrimination.

Finally, our use of applicants with backgrounds as police officers, firefighters, and code enforcement officers may be regarded as both a strength and limitation of our design. On the one hand, the inclusion of police officers by race presents us the opportunity to determine if, for example, there are general negative reactions to police violence against all police officers, or if any reactions are limited to White officers given the context of Mr. Floyd’s death by a White officer. On the other hand, we are unable to determine if the findings of our study generalize beyond the narrow professional background characteristics we include in the study. We acknowledge the trade-off and potential limitation of this design choice.

Ethics approval

This project was approved by the University of Oxford’s Central University Research Ethics Committee (R61595/RE001 & RE002). Nevertheless, additional comments on the ethics of the experiment are warranted given debates in the literature about the ethics of correspondence tests [ 33 , 34 ].

By design, correspondence studies of discrimination involve deception, given that participants, employers in our case, are not made aware that they are participating in an experiment. Therefore, we did not obtain informed consent from the employers who participated in the study. There are trade-offs between the costs and benefits of audit and correspondence designs, but the use of deceptive study designs may be acceptable under the following conditions: a) other research designs (i.e., that do not use deception) cannot similarly overcome the methodological obstacles to measuring discrimination; b) the topic has social relevance; and c) there is minimal harm to participants and minimal negative externalities [ 34 – 36 ]. We suggest that our study meets these conditions, and in our S1 File we provide a detailed justification for our use of deception.

Our results reveal that prior to the killing of George Floyd, 24.5 percent of White job applicants in Boston and Philadelphia received a call, text, or email response from sampled employers to discuss the job opening or to interview for the position, in comparison to 17.9 percent of otherwise similar Black applicants, for a statistically significant 6.6 percentage point disparity (see Fig 1 , with corresponding coefficients and standard errors in Table 2 ). The White-to-Black ratio in terms of the call-back rate is 1.37 (24.5 / 17.9), which is almost exactly equivalent to the disparity reported in a recent meta-analysis of audit studies by Quillian and colleagues [ 8 ]. In that study, the authors find no change in the levels of employment discrimination against Black applicants in the US between 1989 and 2015, and that White applicants received, on average, 36% more callbacks from prospective employers than otherwise similarly qualified Black applicants. Hence, whereas our focus is specifically on entry-level job applicants with a prior background in policing, firefighting, or code enforcement, we observe a pattern of employment discrimination similar to other audit studies of employment discrimination in the United States.

The figure displays a cross-tabulation of response rates, by race and time period. Results in the figure also correspond to the predictive margins of the interaction between race and time period from Model 1 in Table 2 .

’+ p<0.10

* p<0.05

** p<0.01

*** p<0.001 (two-tailed test).

N = 1,634 job applications (817 jobs). Standard errors clustered by job.

Marginal effects from Model 1 estimates are displayed in Fig 1 . To condense the presentation of results, we have omitted from the table the coefficients and standard errors for the indicators of the month and day of the week when job applications were submitted.

Where our study moves beyond extant research is the replication of the design in the aftermath of highly publicized police violence. In the six-week period immediately following George Floyd’s murder, the racial gap in employer responses reversed to a 4.6 percentage point advantage for Black applicants (22 percent vs. 26.6 percent; White-to-Black ratio of 0.83). The corresponding interaction term in Model 1 of Table 2 indicating the 11.2 percentage point shift between the White advantage in time period 1 (i.e., 6.6pp) to the Black advantage in time period 2 (4.6pp) is marginally significant (p = 0.075).

In Model 2 we add controls for gender, location of the job, online job platform, job type, prior profession, and the month and day of the week of the application, with results similar to estimates from Model 1 in terms of the race by time period interactions. We also see that employer callbacks for jobs related to office and customer support as well as sales were less likely relative to driver positions.

In Model 3 we add three-way interactions between race, time period, and prior profession, to determine if the changes in the racial gap in employer responses over time is more pronounced among one particular profession. For instance, given the context of the study—the killing of a Black man by a White police officer—it is plausible that reversal of the White advantage in employment depicted in Fig 1 reflects a declining preference for hiring White police officers rather than an increasing preference for Black job applicants irrespective of prior profession. However, the lack of statistically significant three-way interactions in Model 3 (i.e., the Race x Time Period 2 x Firefighter coefficient or the Race x Time Period 2 x Code Enforcement coefficient) suggests that the reversal of the White advantage in employer responses from time period 1 to period 2 reflects lessening discrimination against Black applicants rather than declining employer preferences for White former police officers.

Whereas a select number of public opinion polls and empirical studies reveal that attitudes about police and perceptions of racial discrimination changed following George Floyd’s murder and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests [ 6 , 20 ], our contribution has been to focus on tangible changes in discriminatory behavior, in this case in the realm of employment.

Our results reveal that, for applicants with prior backgrounds as front-line public sector employees, the atmosphere of unrest around police brutality and anti-Black racism following the murder of George Floyd reduced levels of discrimination in the service-related labor market. This observed shift in racially disparate hiring practices after a highly-dramatic event is consistent with Blumer and Duster’s theorizing about group threat [ 17 ]. The death of Mr. Floyd and the protests that immediately ensued may have raised consciousness about racial inequalities among employers, leading some to reduce exclusionary practices against Black job applicants.

For how long employment practices remain more equitable as societal attention to racial injustice wanes is a critical question, although not one we are able to answer in the present study. Social psychological research on interventions to alter implicit racial biases suggests that while preferences for some racial groups may be malleable in the very short term, biases tend to be quite stable in the long-run [ 37 , 38 ]. Consistent with these studies, Birkelund et al. did not find evidence of a sustained change in ethnic discrimination against Pakistani job applicants after an anti-Muslim terrorist attack in Norway [ 12 ]. Moreover, recent meta-analyses of audit experiments, in both the United States and Britain, reveal that levels of hiring discrimination against ethnic minorities tend to remain stubbornly persistent over many decades [ 8 , 9 ].

Hence, it may be the case that reduced discrimination toward Black applicants observed in the second time period of this study reverts toward our baseline estimates in the longer-term once societal attention shifts away from the incessant problem of anti-Black racism. Such a scenario of a temporary shift in race relations would also be consistent with Blumer and Duster’s process of collective definition, in the sense that exclusionary practices and discrimination may resume if the superordinate group once again feels their relative group position is being threatened [ 17 ]. An important avenue for future research, then, is to examine the extent to which immediate reductions in employment discrimination following protests against racial injustice are sustained over time.

Finally, whereas our design has focused on entry-level jobs and applicants with backgrounds as police officers, firefighters, and code enforcement officers, future research should move beyond these particular specifications in order to more broadly consider patterns of employment discrimination in the wake of protests against racial injustice. Per our application of group threat theory, we expect highly visible acts of police violence against Black individuals and widespread protests against racial injustice to yield at least a short-term reduction in employment discrimination against many Black applicants, not simply a reduction for Black former police officers, firefighters, and code enforcement officers [ 16 , 17 ].

Supporting information

Acknowledgments.

We are grateful to Neftalem Emanuel, Helen Kosc, and Annalena Wolcke for research assistance, and we thank Arun Frey for insightful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by the British Academy (PF19\100020 to MR), the John Fell Fund of the Oxford University Press (to DK), and the Leverhulme Trust through the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (to DK). The funders did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, the decision to publish, or the preparation of the manuscript.

Data Availability

• PLoS One. 2022; 17(5): e0267889.

Decision Letter 0

29 Mar 2022

PONE-D-22-02153Do Black Lives Matter to Employers? A Combined Field and Natural Experiment of Racially Disparate Hiring Practices in the Wake of Protests against Police Violence and Racial OppressionPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Kirk,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Together, the three reviewers are expert in the substantive and methodological issues under investigation in your manuscript.

Reviewer 1 recommended minor revisions and detailed a few ways you might like to improve the manuscript. The first involves adding a little more reflection on how the design and analytical choices you made might have affected the results. The second is about providing some consideration of alternative interpretations of the results (e.g. the labour market may have been different in the two time periods). Like reviewer 3, reviewer 1 raises the issue of generalisation to other occupational groups.

To my mind, the results and discussion sections were concise, which is great, but also felt a little short. You could lengthen the discussion section by responding to reviewer 1’s comments there (PLOS ONE has no strict word limit).

Finally, reviewer 1 recommends adding some information on Black /White employment rates in the two periods (which would help the discussion about unemployment rates being linked to minority disadvantage), making a comparison with Quillian et al.s (I assume this is 2017, the PNAS piece) study, and providing some more descriptive statistics.

Reviewer 2 recommended straight accept and was very positive indeed.

Reviewer 3 recommended minor revisions. The recommendations cover two things. First, you might want to say something a little more explicit about the timing of the work (no reader is going to think that you started the project hoping for an exogenous shock like George Floyd, but reviewer 3 might be correct in saying you could saying something more about the purpose and timing of the study). Second, there is the issue of generalisation not only to other occupational groups (mentioned also by reviewer 1), but also in terms of timing (the murder of George Floyd was a particular moment in history, and former White police officers might have been particularly punished at such a moment). You could therefore say a little more about whether the findings might be different if one were to do the same study at a time when the exogenous shock is (for instance) not quite so strong as George Floyd and the widespread national protests that followed.

On the bases of these reviewers and my own reading of the paper, I am asking for minor revisions. This is a very interesting paper and I look forward to reading the revised version. You do not necessarily need to redraft the manuscript in each and every instance (reviewer 1 asks for more on occupational generalisibility while reviewer 3 suggests it’s so obvious it doesn’t need saying — I would recommend saying more rather than dropping it), but please do detail in a ‘response to review’ document your responses to the referee comments.

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

Reviewer #3: Yes

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Reviewer #1: I recommend an acceptance without the need for any further revision. I reviewed an earlier version of this paper at a different journal. The authors addressed all the points I had in my earlier review. I believe this article would be a good fit for PLOS One. It is methodologically sound and makes an important contribution to the social sciences by studying what effect (if any) critical events can have in discriminatory behavior in the marketplace.

Reviewer #2: This is a well-written and highly interesting study of changes in racial discrimination before and after the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. The authors have conducted a field experiment in two waves, using the murder as an “exogenous shock” that separates the two waves. In line with their hypothesis, nicely argued along the lines of group threat theory, they find that the black/white difference in interview callbacks is reversed in wave two, suggesting an employer preference for black applicants in the immediate aftermath of the murder of George Floyd.

I definitely think that this paper merits publication. It is an original contribution to a field of research on its way to get “saturated” and the study is carefully executed, including convincing arguments for the choice of names, occupations, and the fictitious applicants’ prior professions. The analyses are also well done and presented in an accessible way. Still, I would recommend a bit more reflection on how some of the authors’ choices may affect their findings, as well as pointing out some alternative interpretations of the results that should be discussed.

The authors have made an interesting choice in letting the fictitious applicants have former work experience as police officers, firefighters, or code enforcement officers. In the supporting information document, they argue convincingly that it is not uncommon for individuals with such work experience to seek new career paths. However, the special type of prior professions begs the question of whether one would find the same effects for applicants with completely different qualifications and work experiences, or whether the change in employer behavior would be similar across different backgrounds. In other words: do the authors interpret their findings as a general reduction in hiring discrimination against black or primarily a reduction in discrimination against individuals with prior experience as police officers and fire fighters?

Relatedly, the authors point out on p. 15 that the “results may not fully generalize to the population of jobs in a labor market.” This is an understatement. All field experiments suffer from this limitation, but this one most certainly so as the four different categories of service-related jobs that are applied to represent a very small set of available jobs. I would strongly recommend that the authors acknowledge this limitation and offer some more space in reflecting on its implications.

The authors also point out that the general labor market situation characterizing the two waves was quite different because the first wave was conducted in the midst of the pandemic when the unemployment rates increased dramatically. However, I do not find that they really reflect on this problem besides arguing that a focus on black/white differences in callbacks is the most relevant outcome measure in both waves. Now, I certainly do not think that the reversal of the black/white disparities could be explained by a change in general employment levels, but some previous studies (e.g., the work of Stijn Bart) suggest that minority disadvantage tend to be higher when unemployment rates are high. Indeed, it would be beneficial if the authors added information about the average black/white employment rates in the two periods and in the areas of which the study was conducted. If the black/white difference was reduced, this would probably explain some of the effect, yet the gap was probably not turned on its head, suggesting that the study actually do document a reduction in discrimination.

The authors could also consider comparing the discrimination rates in the two separate waves to the overall discrimination rate against black applicants across time in the cited Quillian et al. study. I believe the readers would be interested in learning whether the baseline results (wave 1) align with what has already been established.

Finally, I think the paper would benefit from a table with a description of study characteristics. This information provides a useful overview of the study an makes it more transparent.

Reviewer #3: This is an excellent study with important implications and appropriate and thoroughly documented design and analysis. I recommend publication, subject to some minor revisions.

1. It would be helpful to the reader to understand how it is that the authors came to be doing a study that was interrupted by the George Floyd protest. This currently reads almost as if this was by design, but obviously this can’t be the case. What was the larger purpose of the study?

2. Consider how the use of a former police officer as a characteristic of the candidate following the case of police killing limits the generalizability of the study. For example, might it be the case that a former white police officer is particularly punished in this circumstance? The interaction models speak to this, I believe, but the authors should be more explicit about this.

3. The point about the study not generalizing to the entire labor market is true, but probably doesn’t need to be said. Does any audit study generalize to the entire labor market?

Congratulations to the authors on this excellent study.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

Reviewer #3: No

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Author response to Decision Letter 0

We thank the reviewers and editor for their many helpful and insightful comments. We gave careful attention to all of the detailed suggestions offered by the reviewers and we believe we have made corresponding revisions in the paper to address them. Below we reproduce reviewer comments (with the exclusion of general summary comments), with our response immediately thereafter (marked by a *). Line numbers referenced below refer to those found in the unmarked version of the revised manuscript.

Response to Reviewer #1:

Reviewer 1 recommended an acceptance. We appreciate the enthusiasm for our work.

Response to Reviewer #2:

I definitely think that this paper merits publication. It is an original contribution to a field of research on its way to get “saturated” and the study is carefully executed, including convincing arguments for the choice of names, occupations, and the fictitious applicants’ prior professions. The analyses are also well done and presented in an accessible way. Still, I would recommend a bit more reflection on how some of the authors’ choices may affect their findings, as well as pointing out some alternative interpretations of the results that should be discussed. The authors have made an interesting choice in letting the fictitious applicants have former work experience as police officers, firefighters, or code enforcement officers. In the supporting information document, they argue convincingly that it is not uncommon for individuals with such work experience to seek new career paths. However, the special type of prior professions begs the question of whether one would find the same effects for applicants with completely different qualifications and work experiences, or whether the change in employer behavior would be similar across different backgrounds. In other words: do the authors interpret their findings as a general reduction in hiring discrimination against black or primarily a reduction in discrimination against individuals with prior experience as police officers and fire fighters?

*Reviewer 2 has hit upon a central question. We do not wish to extrapolate beyond what is sensible with our data, so all we can reasonably say at the moment is that our findings pertain to the front-line public sector employees that are the focus of our study. However, in the Discussion section of the paper, we call for additional research using different qualifications than the ones used in this study (lines 462-470). Nevertheless, group threat theory leads us to expect that there would be a general reduction in employment discrimination in the wake of highly publicized police violence and associated protest activity.

*We thank the reviewer for the suggestion to consider the implications of our sampling design with respect to generalizability and study limitations. We have added some corresponding discussion to lines 335-346.

*We appreciate the suggestion to reflect on the likely differences in discrimination rates in tight vs. slack labor markets. We now do so on lines 317-334. Given that discrimination tends to be greater in slack labor markets, our findings may actually understate the effect of highly publicized police violence and widespread protest activity, if it had occurred at a time not characterized by high unemployment.

*We concur that it is useful to compare baseline rates of discrimination in our study to the trends examined in the Quillian et al. (2017) meta-analysis. Indeed, we find that the ratio of White-to-Black call-backs in our study are highly similar to those reported in the Quillian et al. study (see lines 383-391).

*We have added Table 1 showing study characteristics, namely observations by time period, applicant race, gender, and prior profession.

Response to Reviewer #3:

*Reviewer 3 suggested we provide further detail about the original motivation of our study, which was interrupted by the murder of George Floyd. Our original study was in fact designed to examine reactions to police officers and their potential stigma in the labor market. Of course we could not have anticipated the murder of Mr. Floyd or the reaction to his death. Whereas the attention generated by the murder of Mr. Floyd was a vast order of magnitude greater than many deaths, the reviewer presumably knows that roughly 1,000 to 1,100 individuals are killed by the police each year in the United States (according to a variety of data sources, including the Washington Post police shootings database, Fatal Encounters, and mappingpoliceviolence.org ). Hence, while our original intent was to study reactions to the police in the context of what might be called their more typical incidents of violence, the death of Mr. Floyd tragically provided an opportunity to examine our question in the context of widespread protests and media attention. We have sought to clarify these points on lines 170-176.

*Per the reviewer’s excellent suggestion, we provide a broader discussion of the limitations of our design choices (lines 347-355), including limits on generalizing beyond the professional background characteristics examined in the study. In the Discussion section, we encourage future research that is designed in such a way to provide broader generalizability (lines 462-470).

*While appreciate the reviewers point, but have opted to retain this particular discussion about generalizability in order to address Reviewer 2’s comments.

Submitted filename: ResponsetoReviewers.docx

Decision Letter 1

19 Apr 2022

PONE-D-22-02153R1

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Acceptance letter

21 Apr 2022

Dear Dr. Kirk:

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department.

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Dr. Jonathan Jackson

10 Years Since Trayvon

The story of the first decade of black lives matter..

On February 26, 2012, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Florida, because as a Black boy walking in a gated community, he was deemed “suspicious.” Zimmerman’s acquittal appalled a nation often willfully blind to the vulnerability of living while Black. Ten years later, “Black Lives Matter” has grown from a hashtag to a protester’s cry to a cultural force that has reshaped American politics, society, and daily life. It is, at the same time, a specific collection of organizations and people whose decisions have attracted both applause and criticism; whose actions have been a source of intrigue; whose personal relationships have both strengthened and splintered under the stress and exposure. This special issue attempts to tell the story of the first decade of Black Lives Matter, the movement — as well as the country it moved. — Lindsay Peoples-Wagner and Morgan Jerkins

Grief Over Time

By Derecka Purnell

For Trayvon Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, ten years might as well be yesterday.

Her pain united a nation  — that’s the inscription written in gold capital letters across Mamie Till-Mobley’s headstone. She buried her 14-year-old son, Emmett, in 1955 after white men brutally murdered him near Money, Mississippi. She left the casket open to display his mutilated body in the suit he’d gotten for Christmas the year before. Her decision helped catalyze the civil-rights movement and sparked international calls for justice. Till-Mobley became a teacher and activist who advocated in Emmett’s name until her death in 2003.

Sybrina Fulton feels honored when supporters compare her to Till-Mobley. “She’s an icon. She was the example of, you know, a strong Black woman,” she tells me in December. “And I have to say that people expect us to be strong. But the thing about it is we are strong because we have to be strong, not because we want to be strong. There’s a difference, you know?”

CONTINUE READING ➼

The Beginning

Timeline by Camille Squires. Additional reporting by Alice Markham-Cantor.

February 26, 2012 Trayvon Martin , 17, leaves his relative’s home in Sanford, Florida, to go to a local 7-Eleven for a bag of Skittles and a beverage. As he is walking home, George Zimmerman , a neighborhood-watch captain, calls 911 and reports seeing a person who looks “suspicious.” Zimmerman then confronts Trayvon and shoots and kills him.

February 28, 2012 Trayvon’s family retains Benjamin Crump, a lawyer known for representing the parents of Martin Lee Anderson, a Black 14-year-old who died at a Florida Juvenile Justice boot camp for teens in 2006 after being beaten and suffocated by guards. Crump had helped the Andersons reach a $5 million settlement with the state.

on the cover

March 8, 2012 Crump and Trayvon’s family file a wrongful-death lawsuit and demand that law enforcement hand over 911 tapes of the call made during the incident. That day, Trayvon’s parents authorize a petition on Change.org calling for Zimmerman to be prosecuted for murder. By the end of the month, it will gather more than 2.2 million signatures.

March 19, 2012 Florida governor Rick Scott asks the state’s Department of Law Enforcement to open an investigation into the Trayvon Martin shooting.

March 20, 2012 The Justice Department and FBI also open investigations into Trayvon’s death. A Florida state attorney announces that a grand jury will convene in April.

March 21, 2012 A Million Hoodies Movement for Justice is created by 25-year-old Daniel Maree to call for the arrest of George Zimmerman. A “Million Hoodies” march is held in Union Square.

The Fear of the Hoodie

By Emil Wilbekin

The history of the hoodie aligns with America’s divisions of class, race, and identity. It has served as a vehicle for both this country’s dreams (athleticism, higher education, luxury) and denials (counterculture, anti-Establishment, racial injustice). It was born in the 1930s at Champion when the clothing company that made sweatshirts attached a hood. It soon became popular with athletes and laborers in the Northeast because the added fabric served as a form of protection against the elements and later with high-school athletes, who would wear their schools’ logos and crests on their chests.

Then, in 1973, the beat dropped in the Bronx, and the hoodie became the uniform of MCs, stickup kids, graffiti artists, and b-boys. A staple of hip-hop culture, the hoodie represented defiance, the down low, discretion, and dignity. When skateboard kids in L.A. and punk-rockers in NYC adopted it, the sweatshirt with a hood became a symbol of disruption. Suddenly, the counterculture found itself with a new street-style standard that could be idiosyncratic by way of color, size, patches, shredding, band logos, safety pins, skulls and crossbones, bleaching, or whatever you wanted to add to say “Fuck you!”

March 23, 2012 President Obama speaks on Trayvon’s killing for the first time, saying, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” Geraldo Rivera says on Fox & Friends that Trayvon’s hoodie was as much responsible for his death as Zimmerman. This draws intense criticism, and Rivera later apologizes.

The Fallacy of Representation

By Camonghne Felix

I was 17 when President-elect Obama walked across the stage in Grant Park with his Black, beautiful, accomplished wife and their two young Black daughters to give his acceptance speech. It’s a hazy memory. The morning after, still groggy, I wondered if I drifted during coverage and dreamt it. Coming out of her bedroom, slow and curious like a shadow, my mother stood beside me, mouth agape at the television screen. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered, as if not to awaken some alternate reality. It was what one might imagine a fantastical, spectacular culmination of thousands of years of struggle to feel like. It was satisfying, the spite of it all: this Black man, on this stage, with his Black family, knowing there were witnesses who doubted his legitimacy or, worse, would rather see him dead than occupy the White House. I’d never felt that high of representation mirroring me.

March 23, 2012 In Miami’s game with the Detroit Pistons, some members of the team play in sneakers with the messages RIP TRAYVON MARTIN and WE WANT JUSTICE on them.

March 26, 2012 Six state senators from New York City wear hoodies in the Capitol Chamber. One of them is a state senator from Brooklyn named Eric Adams.

March 28, 2012 U.S. representative Bobby Rush is thrown off the House floor for wearing a hoodie in protest.

April 11, 2012 George Zimmerman is arrested and charged with second-degree murder. His supporters quickly raise more than $200,000 in donations for his defense.

November 23, 2012 Jordan Davis, a Black 17-year-old, and his three friends park at a gas station in Jacksonville, Florida, to buy gum and cigarettes and are approached by Michael Dunn, who is white. After a verbal altercation, Dunn fires ten rounds at their car, killing Jordan. Dunn leaves the scene of the shooting and orders pizza with his fiancée that night.

January 29, 2013 A week after performing with her band at Obama’s second inauguration, Hadiya Pendleton, 15, is killed in a Chicago park when a gunman fires into a crowd. She becomes a symbol of gun violence. Michelle Obama attends her funeral.

July 13, 2013 After 16 hours of deliberation, a jury of six women (five white, one Puerto Rican) finds Zimmerman not guilty.

The Day I Quit Believing

By Michael Arceneaux

The day George Zimmerman was acquitted was the end of a very brief moment in which I gave America the benefit of the doubt. Six days later, Barack Obama, the man responsible for that temporary suspension of disbelief, gave a speech that drove home for me how foolish I had been.

July 13, 2013 Amid public outrage at the Zimmerman verdict, Alicia Garza, a 32-year-old organizer in Oakland, California, posts a “love letter to Black people” on Facebook that ends with: “Black people. I love you. I love us. Our lives matter.” Patrisse Cullors, a 30-year-old anti-incarceration organizer in L.A. and a friend of Garza’s, starts posting with the hashtag #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Overnight, Cullors posts on Garza’s Facebook: “twin, #BLACKLIVESMATTER campaign? can we discuss this? i have ideas. i am thinking we can do a whole social media/all out in the streets organizing effort. let me know.”

July 14, 2013 Ayo Tometi reaches out to Garza to get involved. Tometi, then known as Opal, is the director of a New York immigrants’-rights organization, and all three women are part of a network called Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD). In the week after the verdict, Garza puts up #BLACKLIVESMATTER signs in Oakland. Cullors leads a protest down Rodeo Drive in Los Angeles with a banner reading #BLACKLIVESMATTER. Tometi buys the domain name Blacklivesmatter.com. They set up #BlackLivesMatter Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter pages, and Tometi sends out an email blast to Black community organizers about the hashtag and a project of sharing stories about why #BlackLivesMatter and what they’re doing to ensure this. That summer, the first chapter of what will go on to become the primary Black Lives Matter organization is formed in Los Angeles.

September 14, 2013 Jonathan Ferrell, a 24-year-old Black former football player, knocks on a stranger’s door seeking help following an automobile accident in Charlotte, North Carolina. The woman who answers calls the police, and when officers arrive, one of them fatally shoots Ferrell after another misses with a taser.

October 2, 2013 Law & Order: SVU airs an episode taking elements from Trayvon Martin’s killing titled “American Tragedy,” in which a white woman shoots and kills a Black boy who she mistakenly believes is following her home. Protesters in the episode carry signs saying BLACK LIVES MATTER.

November 2, 2013 Renisha McBride, a 19-year-old Black woman, is killed by Theodore Wafer, a 54-year-old white man, in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, when she knocks on his door at night after crashing her car.

April 25, 2014 TMZ releases a tape of L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling telling his then-girlfriend, “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you’re associating with Black people … The little I ask you is not to promote it on [Instagram] and not to bring them to my games.” Sterling has already ​​been sued by federal prosecutors for allegedly refusing to rent apartments to Black people, and his comments spur an uproar in the NBA, with LeBron James responding, “There is no room for Donald Sterling in our league.” Days later, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announces that he is banning Sterling for life.

April 30, 2014 In Milwaukee, Dontre Hamilton, a 31-year-old with a history of mental illness, is sleeping on a bench in Red Arrow Park when he’s approached by Officer Christopher Manney, who gives him a pat down. Manney claims that upon waking up, Hamilton steals his baton and swings it at him, and the officer shoots him 14 times, killing him.

June 15, 2014 Ta-Nehisi Coates publishes “The Case for Reparations” in The Atlantic, writing, “Reparations — by which I mean the full acceptance of our collective biography and its consequences — is the price we must pay to see ourselves squarely.” The piece propels into the mainstream the radical argument to provide financial payments to the descendants of enslaved people.

July 17, 2014 Eric Garner is killed in Staten Island by NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo after being put in a choke hold on the sidewalk. He had been approached by police on the suspicion of selling loose cigarettes. Ramsey Orta, a friend of Garner’s, films the 43-year-old father of six gasping for air and saying “I can’t breathe” before going limp.

August 2, 2014 Ramsey Orta , who filmed Garner’s death, is arrested by the NYPD on weapons charges in a move that many argue is retaliatory.

What Happened to the Witnesses

As told to Camille Squires

Filming police killings has long-lasting consequences. Four who did tell their stories.

August 5, 2014 John Crawford, a 22-year-old Black man, is shot by police in Beavercreek, Ohio. Crawford had been seen with a BB gun in Walmart, and another patron called 911. Police arrived and shot him immediately. He and his girlfriend were at the store to pick up crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate bars for a family gathering.

August 7, 2014 Theodore Wafer is found guilty of second-degree murder in the Renisha McBride trial. Garza and Cullors would later discuss feeling uncomfortable at seeing #blacklivesmatter used in celebration of his conviction.

August 9, 2014 Michael Brown, 18, and his friend are walking down Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Missouri, when they are approached by Officer Darren Wilson in his patrol car, who orders them off the street. After a brief struggle through the SUV’s open window, Brown flees with Wilson in pursuit. When Brown turns back toward Wilson, the officer shoots him six times. His body is left on the street for over four hours.

August 10, 2014 A candlelight vigil is held for Brown in Ferguson. Afterward, protesters head to the streets near the site of the shooting, where they are met by police in riot gear. There are reports of looting. A convenience store nearby is burned.

The Religion of Protest

By Nyle Fort

“This ain’t your grandparents’ civil-rights movement!” Rapper Tef Poe yelled from the stage of the Chaifetz Arena in St. Louis on October 12, 2014. Several of us stood in solidarity and turned our backs on the religious leaders who organized the rally in the wake of Michael Brown’s killing at the hands of white police officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson, Missouri. The Black church, once the moral compass of African American politics, would not lead this new generation of protest.

August 11, 2014 The FBI opens a civil-rights investigation into Michael Brown’s killing. On the ground in Ferguson, police use tear gas to disperse protesters.

August 11, 2014 Ezell Ford, a 25-year-old Black man who according to his family has a history of mental illness, is killed by L.A. police officers while walking in the street. During a struggle, they shoot Ford in the back at close range.

August 12, 2014 As protests in Ferguson escalate, President Obama releases a statement: “The events of the past few days have prompted strong passions, but as details unfold, I urge everyone in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country, to remember this young man through reflection and understanding. We should comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds.”

August 15, 2014 Ferguson police release surveillance video of a robbery that took place the day of the shooting, alleging Brown was suspected of stealing cigars. Lawyers for the Brown family describe it as character assassination. Later, Fox News host Juliet Huddy suggests, “Had that tape been out there … [it might’ve lent] credence to the fact that maybe in some way — we don’t know this — but maybe this officer was justified.”

August 16, 2014 After looting the night before, a state of emergency is declared in Ferguson.

August 16, 2014 DeRay Mckesson , a Minneapolis schools administrator, travels to Ferguson for the first time to join the protests. According to Mckesson, he and others will go on to remain present for 400 days of protests there. As winter approaches, Mckesson begins to wear the blue Patagonia vest that he comes to be identified with.

August 18, 2014 Missouri governor Jay Nixon deploys the National Guard to Ferguson; protests continue to escalate.

August 23, 2014 Al Sharpton leads a protest on Staten Island calling for a federal takeover of the investigation into Garner’s death.

August 25, 2014 Page A1 of the New York Times declares that Brown had been “no angel, with public records and interviews with friends and family revealing both problems and promise in his young life.” That month, Black Twitter users had been pointing out that the images of Brown used in media coverage portrayed the 18-year-old man as a “thug.” Many posted side-by-side photos of themselves looking “respectable” and “threatening” to drive the point home with the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown.

August 29, 2014 Patrisse Cullors and Brooklyn-based organizer Darnell Moore orchestrate Black Life Matters Freedom Rides, bringing more than 600 Black people from 18 cities to Ferguson. When some of the activists who were present in Ferguson return to their home states, they start BLM chapters in 18 cities.

September 18, 2014 Shaun King, who has amassed a large Twitter following for several posts about Eric Garner’s death, writes a viral thread analyzing the forensic evidence in the Michael Brown shooting and refuting Wilson’s claim that he had to shoot because he felt threatened.

October 20, 2014 Laquan McDonald, 17, is ordered by Chicago police to drop a knife with a three-inch blade. He refuses and walks away. Officer Jason Van Dyke shoots him 16 times in less than 15 seconds. Initially, there is almost no public outcry.

November 20, 2014 Akai Gurley, 28, is shot dead in the stairwell of a Brooklyn apartment building by Officer Peter Liang, who is subsequently charged with manslaughter.

November 22, 2014 Tamir Rice, 12, is playing with a toy gun outside of a community center in Cleveland, Ohio, when police receive a call that a juvenile is pointing “a pistol” at people. “It’s probably fake,” the caller says, twice. As two officers pull up, they shout repeatedly at Tamir, “Show me your hands!” before Officer Timothy Loehmann shoots at the boy twice, killing him. In the aftermath, it comes out that Loehmann had been deemed unfit for duty in a previous law-enforcement job.

November 24, 2014 The grand jury declines to indict Darren Wilson for the death of Michael Brown. This decision sets off a wave of protests in Ferguson. Although Governor Jay Nixon has called in the National Guard, the situation on the streets becomes more violent as the night progresses. The police fire tear gas and rubber bullets. More than a dozen buildings are set on fire, some 60 people are arrested, and 16 people are taken to the hospital. The next day, for the first time, the reactionary #AllLivesMatter hashtag trends on Twitter.

November 28, 2014 The group Blackout for Human Rights organizes #Blackoutblackfriday, a set of national protests to boycott large retailers and bring attention to racial injustice on Black Friday. That day, 14 protesters in BLACK LIVES MATTER T-shirts, including Alicia Garza, chain themselves to trains in West Oakland, halting transit. After an hour and a half, all 14 are arrested.

November 30, 2014 In a silent protest, members of the St. Louis Rams run onto the field with their arms raised in a “Hands up, don’t shoot” gesture. The St. Louis Police Officers Association call for the players to be punished; the Rams coach announces the players were “exercising their right to free speech” and will not be disciplined.

December 3, 2014 A grand jury decides not to indict Daniel Pantaleo in Eric Garner’s death. By the end of the day, the Justice Department announces it will open an investigation. Massive protests break out across New York and around the country in response to the decision, and Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” become a rallying cry.

December 6, 2014 Chicago Bulls guard Derrick Rose wears an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt before a game. Soon, players including LeBron James, Kyrie Irving, and Kobe Bryant are wearing the shirts.

December 11, 2014 Black congressional staffers, led by the Congressional Black Associates, stage a walkout of Congress in response to the Eric Garner and Michael Brown killings.

December 12, 2014 Erica Garner leads a “die-in” at the Staten Island location where her father was killed.

December 20, 2014 Two NYPD police officers, Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, are killed while sitting in their patrol car by a lone shooter, Ismaaiyl Brinsley, who was purportedly outraged by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. Brinsley then kills himself. Pat Lynch, president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, blames Mayor Bill de Blasio and protesters against police brutality, saying, “There’s blood on many hands tonight.” When the mayor visits the hospital where the officers have been taken, the NYPD turn their backs on him. The next day, the hashtag #BlueLivesMatter begins to trend and is used 22,834 times.

December 23, 2014 Antonio Martin, a Black 18-year-old, is killed by police in Berkeley, Missouri, near St. Louis. Police had responded to reports of shoplifting at a gas station. The incident inspires some small protests in the area.

January 4, 2015 Three dozen people hold “Black Brunch” protests at midtown restaurants they identify as “white spaces,” where they read out names of Black people killed by police. Responding to criticism of the tactic, a member says, “It is an inconvenience to us to be shot in the street.”

January 17, 2015 Marissa Alexander is released from prison. In 2012, she had been sentenced to 20 years after firing a shot into the ceiling to scare off her abusive estranged husband. Arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, a jury rejected her “stand your ground” defense and took only 12 minutes to convict her. Her case becomes a flash point in the arguments over gun control and racial justice.

March 1, 2015 Charley Leundeu Keunang, a 43-year-old Black man, is killed by police on Skid Row in Los Angeles. Local Black Lives Matter activists hold a protest shortly afterward.

March 4, 2015 The Justice Department releases its reports on the Ferguson Police Department, announcing that it will not bring federal civil-rights charges against Darren Wilson, although it found that the department’s practices “disproportionately harm African Americans” and that “this harm stems in part from intentional discrimination.”

March 5, 2015 ABC’s Scandal airs an episode with a Black Lives Matter plotline: Olivia Pope is hired by the D.C. police as a crisis manager after a white officer shoots a Black child.

March 6, 2015 Tony Robinson, a biracial 19-year-old, is shot and killed by law enforcement in Madison, Wisconsin. Called to perform a wellness check on Robinson, police shoot him at least seven times. Within days, protesters gather at the state capitol.

April 4, 2015 Walter Scott, a 50-year-old Black man, is pulled over by white police officer Michael Slager in North Charleston, South Carolina, for a defective light on his car. Scott runs away, and Slager shoots him five times in the back. Feidin Santana , an eyewitness, films the shooting, and the video goes viral.

April 12, 2015 Freddie Gray is severely injured after an encounter with police in Baltimore. The 25-year-old is arrested for possessing what police describe as an illegal switchblade. He is loaded into the back of a police van without a seat belt. On the way to the precinct — in what prosecutors would later allege was a “rough ride” meant to harm handcuffed prisoners — he is injured and falls into a coma. He dies on April 19 from injuries to his spinal cord. Demonstrators take to the streets the next day.

April 27, 2015 During protests following Gray’s funeral, some buildings are burned and stores are looted. The National Guard is dispatched to Baltimore to restore order.

April 28, 2015 President Obama condemns the looting and arson and says about the death of Freddie Gray, “There are some police departments that have to do some soul-searching. There are some communities that have to do some soul-searching. But our country needs to do some soul-searching. This is not new. It’s been going on for decades.”

White Backlash

June 17, 2015 Dylann Roof murders nine Black people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. After the shooting, investigators find a handwritten journal in Roof’s car that details his motivations.

“My name is Dylann Storm Roof. I was born on the third day of April, 1994 in Columbia, South Carolina. I was not raised in a racist home or enviroment [sic]. Living in the South, almost every White person has a small amount of racial awareness, simply because of the number of negroes in this part of the country. But it is a superficial awareness … The event that truly awakened me was the Trayvon Martin case. I kept hearing and seeing his name, and eventually I decided to look him up. I read the Wikipedia article and right away I was unable to understand what the big deal was. It was obvious that Zimmerman was in the right. But more importantly this prompted me to type the words ‘Black on White Crime’ into Google, and I was never the same since. The first website I came to was the Council of Conservative Citizens. There were pages upon pages of these brutal, disgusting black on White murders. I was in disbelief. At this moment I realized that something was very wrong. How could the news be blowing up this Trayvon Martin case while hundreds of these black on White murders got no airtime? … From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing the White race and today I can say with confidence that I am completely racially aware.”

July 13, 2015 Sandra Bland dies in police custody in Waller County, Texas. Three days earlier, the 28-year-old Black woman was pulled over by state trooper Brian Encinia for failing to signal a lane change. Dashcam video shows a heated exchange between Encinia and Bland before he arrests her for assaulting an officer. At the Waller County jail, Bland is put in a cell alone because she is deemed a risk to others. On the morning of the 13th, she is found hanging in her cell from a plastic bag. Her death is ruled a suicide, but her family and activists call for an investigation. Several protests are held in Texas and around the country. Online, people draw attention to the case using the hashtags #SandraBland and #SayHerName.

July 24, 2015 The Movement for Black Lives National Convening — also known as the first Black Lives Matter conference — is held in Cleveland. More than 800 activists attend. Michael Brown’s father, Eric Garner’s mother, and cousins of Emmett Till speak. On the third day of the conference, Cleveland police pepper-spray attendees after they demand the release of a 14-year-old boy who was arrested for allegedly violating open-container laws — for what bystanders said appeared to be a Snapple.

August 8, 2015 BLM protesters in Seattle interrupt a Bernie Sanders campaign speech, calling for a moment of silence to honor Brown and a platform from Sanders for addressing racial injustice. After audience members heckle the protesters and the protesters decline to give up the stage, Sanders leaves without giving his speech.

August 13, 2015 Janelle Monáe and the Wondaland collective release the protest anthem “Hell You Talmbout,” invoking the names of Black Americans killed by police, including Trayvon, Walter Scott, Garner, Freddie Gray, and Bland.

August 21, 2015 Johnetta Elzie, DeRay Mckesson, Brittany Packnett Cunningham, and Samuel Sinyangwe launch Campaign Zero.

The Rise and Rupture of Campaign Zero

By Ernest Owens

Johnetta Elzie wants to remind you that she — and not DeRay Mckesson — was there first.

Ever since Elzie left Campaign Zero, the police-reform organization she and Mckesson founded along with Brittany Packnett Cunningham and Samuel Sinyangwe, she has refused to give on-the-record interviews about what went wrong. But now, she says, she’s ready to be blunt and honest — qualities Elzie argues have been “missing from the movement for a very long time.” Johnetta Elzie wants to remind you that she — and not DeRay Mckesson — was there first.

September 22, 2015 A small committee of activists in Missouri, including Kenny Murdock, registers a Black Lives Matter PAC to raise money and endorse candidates in local and federal races. Murdock calls it “a branch on the tree of Black Lives Matter” and a way to play the game in the “plutocracy” of politics. Meanwhile, an activist in New York, Tarik Mohamed, launches an unconnected Black Lives Matter super-PAC. Neither PAC is officially affiliated with the BLM network, according to co-founder Alicia Garza, who says the organization will not endorse candidates but wants to push the “system of democracy to another level.”

October 18, 2015 Presidential candidate Sanders posts publicly about Black Lives Matter, saying, “Black lives matter. And the reason those words matter is the African American community knows that, on any given day, some innocent person like Sandra Bland can get into a car and then three days later, she’s going to end up dead in jail or their kids are going to get shot. We need to combat institutional racism from top to bottom, and we need major, major reforms in a broken criminal-justice system.”

October 30, 2015 #AUCShutItDown, an Atlanta-based affiliate of Black Lives Matter, disrupts a Hillary Clinton campaign stop at a historically Black university, interrupting her speech until Representative John Lewis talks to the protesters. The next day, Donald Trump tweets, “Black Lives Matter protesters totally disrupt Hillary Clinton event. She looked lost. This is not what we need with ISIS, CHINA, RUSSIA etc.”

November 15, 2015 Jamar Clark, 24, is fatally shot by police in Minneapolis. Witnesses claim he was handcuffed at the time, following a physical altercation with police. Protesters gather within hours, and Minneapolis sees weeks of protests, including an 18-day sit-in at a police station.

November 24, 2015 Dashcam footage of the Laquan McDonald shooting is released by officials in Chicago, prompting hundreds to protest. Jason Van Dyke is charged with murder. Six days later, Mayor Rahm Emanuel fires police superintendent Garry McCarthy.

November 30, 2015 Then–presidential candidate Trump blames his lack of endorsements from Black pastors on BLM. In a Morning Joe interview on MSNBC, he says, “Probably some of the Black Lives Matter folks called them up and said, ‘You shouldn’t be meeting with Trump because he believes that all lives matter.’ I believe Black lives do matter, but I believe all lives matter very strongly.”

December 13, 2015 Shaun King, now senior justice writer for the New York Daily News, comes under fire from Mckesson and others when he is accused of mismanaging funds raised for social-justice causes. An investigation by the Daily Beast offers an overview of King’s past campaign and fund-raising activity but finds it difficult to account for how all of the money was spent.

January 16, 2016 Thousands of protesters around the country begin days of marches to #ReclaimMLK, an initiative started by the Movement for Black Lives to take back Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy from what it calls popular media’s sanitized version. During that weekend, Black Lives Matter protesters shut down the San Francisco Bay Bridge; 25 people are arrested.

February 3, 2016 Mckesson announces a last-minute bid to become mayor of Baltimore. He will go on to place sixth in the Democratic primary.

February 6, 2016 Beyoncé releases the single “Formation.” The music video features imagery of protests against brutality, including Beyoncé standing on a sinking police car and a wall with graffiti that reads STOP SHOOTING US.

February 11, 2016 Peter Liang, the officer who shot and killed Akai Gurley in 2014, is convicted of manslaughter and fired from the NYPD. The charges are later reduced, and Liang is sentenced to five years of probation and 800 hours of community service.

March 4, 2016 More than two dozen BLM protesters disrupt a Trump rally in New Orleans, linking arms and chanting “Black lives matter.” They’re met by chants of “U.S.A.,” led by Trump, and “All lives matter” from the rest of the crowd as well as a few reported shouts of “White power.”

April 8, 2016 After being interrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters at a campaign stop in Philadelphia, Bill Clinton gets into a heated exchange and defends his 1994 crime bill: “I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens … You are defending the people who kill the lives you say matter. Tell the truth.”

June 1, 2016 The Justice Department declines to pursue charges against the officers who shot Clark in 2015, saying it determined Clark was not handcuffed during the incident.

June 26, 2016 Mothers of slain Black boys and men, calling themselves the Mothers of the Movement, speak at the Democratic National Convention.

The Burden of the Black Mother

By Anna Malaika Tubbs

As soon as Mamie Till-Mobley, then Mamie Till, learned of her son’s torture and murder, she got to writing. There was work to be done, a need to understand every detail, a responsibility greater than her own healing. Her memoir — she did not live to witness its publication some 50 years later — reflects, “Emmett was dead. They had pulled his body from the Tallahatchie River … weighted down by a heavy gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire … I had to get everything down … I was the one who was going to have to explain to people.”

July 5, 2016 Videos capture the moment Alton Sterling, 37, is pinned down to the ground and shot five times in the chest at close range by police outside a convenience store in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

July 6, 2016 Philando Castile, 32, is killed by police in St. Paul, Minnesota. Castile was pulled over by Officer Jeronimo Yanez in a traffic stop. Castile told Yanez he had a firearm in his possession. Castile reached for his license, assuring Yanez he was not reaching for his gun. Yanez shot Castile five times, killing him. Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds , who is in the car along with her 4-year-old daughter, livestreams the aftermath of the shooting on Facebook. Within a few hours, it is viewed more than a million times.

July 7, 2016 A peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas turns to mayhem as a gunman, Afghan War veteran Micah Xavier Johnson, shoots and kills five police officers: Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa. Police corner and kill Johnson in the course of a standoff.

July 17, 2016 In the midst of unrest in Baton Rouge after the killing of Sterling, retired Marine Gavin Eugene Long ambushes and shoots six police officers, killing three — Matthew Gerald, Montrell Jackson, and Brad Garafola — before being killed by a SWAT officer. A letter he left behind reads, “I must bring the same destruction that bad cops continue to inflict upon my people.”

July 18, 2016 Charles Kinsey, a 47-year-old Black man, is shot by police in North Miami, Florida. Kinsey, a mental-health worker at a group-care facility, was outside with an autistic patient when police showed up after reports that someone had a gun. Bystander video captures Kinsey lying on the ground with his hands in the air next to his patient while trying to explain the situation to police. Still, an officer shoots him in the leg and handcuffs him. Kinsey survives his injuries.

July 19, 2016 In the middle of the Republican National Convention, Trump comments on the recent police shootings and the Black Lives Matter movement on Bill O’Reilly’s show: “You see them marching and … they’re essentially calling ‘Death to the police,’ and that’s not acceptable.”

July 27, 2016 In Baltimore, State Attorney Marilyn Mosby announces she’s dropping all remaining charges against the officers who were involved in the death of Gray. Three officers have already been acquitted, and one’s trial ended in a hung jury.

August 26, 2016 Colin Kaepernick, a quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, remains seated during the playing of the national anthem. When asked about it after the game, Kaepernick says, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color. To me, this is bigger than football, and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” The next week, Kaepernick begins kneeling during the anthem.  

Black Athletes and the Value of a Body

By Zak Cheney-Rice

Unless you know what to look for, it’s not clear why the photo is notable, let alone historic. It shows a football field, Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, before the start of a game. The teams are on their respective sidelines. Nothing is happening. The playing surface is still smooth, and if anything stands out, it’s the 50-yard-line logo: SF, for San Francisco. If you aren’t looking closely for the player wearing No. 7, the only one sitting down, you’ll probably miss him.

But he’s there, a red speck near the bottom of the frame. Colin Kaepernick’s protest would soon upend the world of professional sports, though nine months earlier, his body had betrayed him. He had lost his starting-quarterback gig to a younger player and suffered a season-ending labrum tear in his shoulder that required surgery. He was 29 years old and three years removed from his Super Bowl appearance, and success had eluded him since then. Criticisms he had faced since becoming a starter — that he was physically impressive but cognitively limited, uneasy in the pocket and unable to read defenses — had fueled the broad impression that he was little more than a body.

September 6, 2016 The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation formalizes its fund-raising abilities by entering into a partnership with nonprofit Thousand Currents (then known as IDEX) that allows Thousand Currents to accept donations on its behalf. At this point, Black Lives Matter counts 37 chapters in the U.S. and five internationally.

September 29, 2016 President Obama defends Kaepernick’s decision to kneel: “I believe that us honoring our flag and our anthem is part of what binds us together as a nation. But I also always try to remind folks that part of what makes this country special is that we respect people’s rights to have a different opinion.” Polling at the time shows that a majority of Americans disagree with Kaepernick’s protest.

November 2, 2016 Trump is elected president. The election also ushers in the first wave of “progressive prosecutors” at the state and local level who want to reform criminal-justice procedures.

November 27, 2016 After the death of Fidel Castro , BLMGNF publishes an admiring Medium post praising him for his example of revolutionary leadership.

January 1, 2017 Former Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy blames the city’s increase in homicides in 2016 on BLM, saying, “We have created an environment where we have emboldened criminals and we are hamstringing the police.”

January 20, 2017 The Trump administration creates a page on the White House website called “Standing Up for Our Law Enforcement,” promising that “President Trump will honor our men and women in uniform and will support their mission of protecting the public. The dangerous anti-police atmosphere in America is wrong. The Trump Administration will end it.”

January 21, 2017 An estimated 5 million people nationwide join the Women’s March on Washington in protest of Trump’s inauguration. Alicia Garza participates in the Washington march, but some quarters critique the whiteness of the crowds, and in Los Angeles, the actor Amir Talai holds up a sign reading, I’LL SEE YOU NICE WHITE LADIES AT THE NEXT #BLACKLIVESMATTER MARCH RIGHT?

February 7, 2017 King, Becky Bond, and other progressives affiliated with the Sanders campaign create the Real Justice PAC to recruit, support, and raise money for progressive prosecutors and DAs running for office.

February 24, 2017 Jordan Peele’s Get Out opens in theaters. It will go on to gross $255 million worldwide.

February 28, 2017 Angie Thomas publishes The Hate U Give , a young-adult novel about a girl dealing with the death of her friend, a Black boy killed by police.

March 17, 2017 The Whitney Biennial opens but faces an immediate backlash over a painting of Emmett Till by white artist Dana Schutz. That weekend, the artist Parker Bright stands in front of the work in a T-shirt with BLACK DEATH SPECTACLE written on the back, and visual artist Hannah Black pens an open letter declaring, “The subject matter is not Schutz’s.”

The Misguided Empathy of Open Casket

By Kimberly Drew

The painting, equally clinical and tempestuous, depicts Emmett Till. Factually, Emmett was 14 years old when he was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955. Factually, the child’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, then Mamie Till, had sent her son from Chicago to visit family in Money, Mississippi. Factually, Emmett was kidnapped. His mutilated body was later sent home to Chicago and displayed in an open casket to, as Till-Mobley told the press, “let the people see what I’ve seen.” Photographs of the young boy were published in Jet magazine, the Chicago Defender, and other Black-press outlets.

April 28, 2017 The first season of Dear White People airs on Netflix. The series includes a plotline in which campus police point a gun at a Black male student.

April 29, 2017 Jordan Edwards, 15, is shot and killed by police in Balch Springs, Texas. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a car driving away from police at a house party. Officers shot into the vehicle and hit Jordan in the head.

May 4, 2017 Ferguson activist Edward Crawford Jr. is found dead in St. Louis under suspicious circumstances. He rose to fame after a photo — in which he is throwing a police tear-gas canister while wearing an American-flag shirt — from the 2014 protests circulated. Crawford is one of at least six Ferguson activists who have died in the years since the protests.

May 22, 2017 The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in Australia for “building a powerful movement for racial equality, courageously reigniting a global conversation around state violence and racism.” Later that year, Garza quietly leaves the organization. Patrisse Cullors is the only founder still directly affiliated.

June 16, 2017 Jeronimo Yanez, who shot Castile five times after pulling him over, is cleared of manslaughter charges.

August 11, 2017 During the Unite the Right rally, hundreds of white supremacists descend on Charlottesville, Virginia, and are met with counterprotesters. The next day, Heather Heyer is struck and killed when James Alex Fields Jr., who holds neo-Nazi beliefs, deliberately drives his car through a crowd of peaceful protesters.

September 22, 2017 At a rally in Alabama, Trump says NFL owners should fire players who kneel for the national anthem: “Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now! Out! He’s fired!’ ?”

September 27, 2017 A judge in Louisiana rules that BLM is a social movement and therefore can’t be sued, throwing out a suit that an anonymous police officer filed against the movement and Mckesson. The officer appealed, and litigation is ongoing in the Louisiana Supreme Court.

December 30, 2017 Erica Garner , who became a full-time activist after her father’s death, dies of a heart attack at 27.

The Battle Wounds of Protest

By Uché Blackstock, M.D.

In the spring and summer of 2020, during largely peaceful protests in at least 100 American cities, ordinary citizens were tear-gassed. Law-enforcement officers used this “riot control” measure to the opposite effect; these weaponized chemicals caused panic and chaos amid the crowds. And no wonder: Tear gas itself does violence to a human body. It incapacitates through extreme irritation of mucous membranes, so when the gas is inhaled, the body responds with uncontrolled coughing. Breathing becomes labored. Eyes that encounter tear gas burn intensely, and the victim may experience a brief period of blindness. The skin, if uncovered, isn’t spared. It burns hot too. All that in just the first minutes of exposure. Symptoms like trouble breathing can persist for weeks, even months, after exposure.

January 16, 2018 Cullors and asha bandele publish When They Call You a Terrorist , a memoir about Cullors’s life.

February 6, 2018 BLM activist Muhiyidin Moye is shot and killed in New Orleans. Investigations into his death fail to uncover evidence that it was related to his activism. He was famous for crossing a police line at a 2017 protest in Charleston to snatch down a Confederate flag.

March 18, 2018 Stephon Clark, a 22-year-old Black man, is killed by police in Sacramento, California. Clark was in the backyard of his grandmother’s house when police, who had been pursuing him, fired more than 20 rounds at him, believing the phone he held in his hand was a gun.

March 22, 2018 Black Lives Matter protesters march in Sacramento following Clark’s death. They shut down traffic on I-5 and block entry to the Golden 1 Center sports arena, delaying the start of a Sacramento Kings game.

May 1, 2018 A study finds that the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter has been used nearly 30 million times on Twitter since its first use in 2013.

July 30, 2018 Rest in Power, a six-part docuseries focused on the life and death of Trayvon, premieres.

The Performance of Black Death

By Carvell Wallace

Maybe I am not in a good place. Maybe it’s mood or hormones. Maybe it’s pandemic life. Maybe I’m too old, been Black in America for too long. Maybe I’m simply too tired of all of it. Whatever the reason, I found it very hard to recently watch for the first time Rest in Power, the 2018 Jay-Z-produced documentary about the death of Trayvon Martin, the trial of George Zimmerman, and the aftermath. I skipped it then for the same reason a person who has survived a shark attack might skip Shark Week. Nonetheless, it remains the only legitimate documentary about Trayvon. Could it offer me something in the way of inspiration or a sense of validated identity from seeing this story told well? At first, all I thought it did was stir up the same feelings that haven’t left me since Trayvon’s killing: an angry fatigue, a charged boredom, a shockingly broad and fierce weariness at how much time we must spend convincing this country that our lives matter.

November 1, 2018 BLM launches an arts-and-culture platform selling goods — including tote bags designed by Emory Douglas, the former culture minister of the Black Panther Party — to raise money for the movement and support Black artists.

November 8, 2018 Lucy McBath, the mother of Jordan Davis, wins election to the U.S. House, becoming the first Black person to represent Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District.

January 17, 2019 FOIA requests reveal that from November 2014 to January 2015, the NYPD organized a large-scale surveillance effort of Black Lives Matter protesters that included numerous undercover officers at rallies and protests and the photographing and storing of images of people who appeared to lead protests.

January 18, 2019 Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who shot Laquan, is sentenced to six years and seven months in prison. Laquan’s family and supporters express disappointment at how short the sentence is.

August 14, 2019 The New York Times Magazine publishes “ The 1619 Project ,” a collection of articles and essays led by journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones commemorating the legacy of slavery and African Americans in U.S. history on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia. The document presents an argument for how chattel slavery laid the foundation of America’s economic, social, and cultural institutions and draws a through-line from this history to contemporary issues of structural racism. The project garners much acclaim but also fierce criticism — largely from conservative commentators who accuse it of falsely rewriting history.

August 24, 2019 Elijah McClain, a 23-year-old massage therapist, is accosted by police in Aurora, Colorado, while walking home from a convenience store. Someone called 911 to report a man wearing a ski mask and “looking sketchy.” The officers put the unarmed McClain into a carotid hold, a kind of choke hold, and paramedics later inject him with ketamine as a sedative. McClain goes into cardiac arrest and dies a few days later.

September 12, 2019 Mckesson publishes a Medium post titled “On Shaun King,” publicly denouncing King for the lack of transparency in his advocacy and fund-raising. Mckesson accuses King of being dishonest in his past fund-raising efforts.

October 12, 2019 Atatiana Jefferson, 28, is killed by police while sitting in her home in Fort Worth, Texas, after a neighbor called the nonemergency line for a wellness check upon noticing that the front door to the house had been left open.

February 23, 2020 Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, is jogging in a neighborhood near Brunswick, Georgia. He passes the home of Gregory and Travis McMichael, who, believing that he is a man suspected of break-ins in the area, grab two guns and begin to follow him in a white Ford F-150. They are joined by neighbor William Bryan, who records their encounter. The McMichaels chase and attempt to cut Arbery off with the pickup truck before Travis exits the car with a shotgun and kills Arbery. No arrests are made until after Bryan’s video is released to the media.

March 13, 2020 Louisville police use a battering ram to enter the apartment of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old EMS technician, while executing a search warrant. At the time, Taylor is in bed with Kenneth Walker, her boyfriend. Walker, who said he feared the apartment was being broken into, fires a shot that strikes an officer in the leg. The police shoot 32 rounds into the apartment. Taylor is struck five times and killed.

May 25, 2020 Christian Cooper, a Black man, asks Amy Cooper , a white woman, to leash her dog in Central Park’s Ramble. She refuses and threatens to call the police and tell them “an African American man is threatening my life.” Christian films the encounter, and his sister tweets the video, which garners 40 million views in less than 48 hours.

May 25, 2020 George Floyd, 46, accused of using a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes, is held down by police officers in Minneapolis during an arrest. One of the officers, Derek Chauvin, kneels on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, killing Floyd. Darnella Frazier, a 17-year-old Black girl, films the murder. Overnight, she posts the video on her Facebook page.

May 26, 2020 In the early hours of the morning, the Minneapolis Police Department publishes an “investigative update” titled “Man Dies After Medical Incident During Police Interaction.” In response, Darnella posts, “Medical incident??? Watch outtt they killed him and the proof is clearlyyyy there!!” By the end of the day, her video has gone viral, protests have started in Minneapolis, and the police chief has fired the four officers involved in Floyd’s arrest.

May 27, 2020 Protests break out around the country about Floyd’s death in Minneapolis as well as Breonna Taylor’s in Kentucky and Ahmaud Arbery’s in Georgia. Demonstrators shut down freeways in Los Angeles and St. Louis. In Minneapolis, cops use rubber bullets and tear gas on protesters. Fires break out, and some stores are looted. The news breaks that Chauvin has been the subject of at least ten complaints, a number that will soon be updated to 17.

May 28, 2020 On the third night of protests in Minneapolis, demonstrators breach and burn down the 3rd Precinct police station, where the four officers who arrested Floyd had worked. Minnesota governor Tim Walz calls in the National Guard. Protests grow around the country, and dozens of demonstrators are arrested in New York.

May 29, 2020 Chauvin is charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. The Star Tribune reports that he is the first white police officer in the state to be criminally prosecuted in the death of a Black civilian. Trump tweets that the protesters are “thugs” and says, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” With demonstrations happening outside the White House, he moves to an underground bunker.

May 30, 2020 Clashes between police and protesters get increasingly violent. In New York, a police car rams through a group of protesters. In Chicago, city officials raise the bridges connecting downtown to the surrounding areas as a form of crowd control, effectively trapping demonstrators at the same time a curfew goes into effect. Shots are fired at officers in Minneapolis and at protesters in Indianapolis.

May 31, 2020 By now, hundreds of thousands of people join protests in 140 cities. In Richmond, Virginia, protesters deface statues of Confederate leaders Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis. Across the country, nearly 100 Confederate statues are torn down over the year.

The Return of the Mass Protest

By Elizabeth Hinton

Andrew Smith had his arms in the air when NYPD officer Michael Sher forcibly snatched down his face mask and fired pepper spray into his eyes. Smith and hundreds of others had gathered at the corner of Bedford and Tilden Avenues in Flatbush to peacefully protest police violence and racial injustice, as millions across the country were doing in the days after George Floyd’s murder. “I made sure my hands [were] exaggeratedly almost in a ‘YMCA’ stance,” Smith told the  Daily News , “to make clear that I’m not here to make an issue.” His compliance didn’t matter. White people protesting alongside Smith also had their hands up, but Sher singled out the 31-year-old Black Brooklyn resident. “I ripped the shit off, and I used it,” Sher boasted of the incident minutes later, an admission captured by the officer’s own body-camera footage.

June 1, 2020 Black Lives Matter Washington, D.C., and other groups peacefully protesting in Lafayette Square are ejected by law enforcement with tear gas minutes before Trump crosses the lawn for a photo op.

The Lure of White Martyrdom

By Michael Harriot

Between 7:06 and 7:11 p.m. on June 1, 2020, equipped only with a Bible and the long, muscular arm of history, Donald Trump became a hero.

As fumes from the chemical compound approved by his accomplices — officials from the Secret Service; the U.S. Park Police; the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department; the D.C. National Guard; the Federal Bureau of Prisons; the U.S. Marshals Service; the Federal Bureau of Investigation; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives; the attorney general of the United States; and the top two commanders of the mightiest military force on the planet — began to irritate the eyes, throats, lungs, and skin of nonviolent protesters, the conquering hero posed in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church and hoisted a Bible to the heavens. The president of the United States had just tear-gassed his own peacefully protesting citizens for a photo op. But Trump treated this chaos as if it were the final panel of a historically accurate graphic novel.

June 2, 2020 The “Blackout Tuesday” campaign takes hold on Instagram. More than 28 million users post images of a solid black square with #BlackLivesMatter and similar hashtags as a way to show solidarity against police brutality and anti-Black racism. The campaign is immediately criticized by activists for being an empty display of performative activism and for crowding out useful information about demonstrations and activities using the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. By this time, protests have occurred in all 50 states; 4,400 people have been arrested; 62,000 National Guard members have been deployed to 24 states; and 40 cities, including New York, are under curfew.

June 3, 2020 The other three officers involved in Floyd’s arrest are charged with aiding and abetting second-degree murder and aiding and abetting second-degree manslaughter. Chauvin is given an additional charge of second-degree murder.

June 4, 2020 NYPD officers trap, brutalize, and arrest several hundred protesters on East 136th Street at Brook Avenue in Mott Haven.

June 5, 2020 Honoring the protesters who have been demonstrating at the Capitol, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser has the Public Works Department paint BLACK LIVES MATTER on a street leading to the White House.

June 7, 2020 Protests have spread worldwide with demonstrations in at least 55 countries. In the U.K., protesters tear down the statue of a 17th-century slave trader. An estimated 15 million to 26 million people participate in the demonstrations in the U.S. over the summer, which would make these the largest protests in the country’s history.

June 8, 2020 The body of 27-year-old Black trans woman Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells is found in Philadelphia. The next day, Riah Milton, a 25-year-old Black trans woman, is found dead in Liberty Township, Ohio.

June 8, 2020 Protesters in Seattle establish the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, barring police from the area.

June 12, 2020 Governor Andrew Cuomo repeals 50-a, a law that shielded police officers’ disciplinary records from being made public, in response to calls for increased accountability during the George Floyd protests.

June 12, 2020 Rayshard Brooks is killed by Officer Garrett Rolfe in a Wendy’s parking lot in Atlanta when Rolfe attempts to arrest him. After an altercation, Brooks grabs Rolfe’s Taser and fires it, then runs. Rolfe shoots him twice in the back.

The Failure of Police Reform

By Micah Herskind and Tiffany Roberts

Two weeks after uprisings sparked by the murder of George Floyd left Atlanta littered with ashes, protesters flooded the city’s streets once more. The police had killed again, and this time the victim was an Atlantan: 27-year-old father and music lover Rayshard Brooks, shot in the back twice by Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe. The Wendy’s where Rolfe killed Brooks the day before went up in flames, lighting up the night as protesters chanted and mourned, decrying a system that disproportionately takes the lives of Black people as a matter of course.

June 13, 2020 Oluwatoyin Salau, a 19-year-old Black woman and Black Lives Matter activist who recently tweeted about sexual assault, is found murdered in Tallahassee, Florida, prompting calls for justice for Black women and greater gender inclusivity in the movement.

June 14, 2020 Spurred by the deaths of Black trans women and men, West Dakota, a drag queen in Brooklyn, and others organize a march for Black trans lives at the Brooklyn Museum.

The Cry to Be Included

By Raquel Willis

“Let today be the last day that you ever doubt Black trans power,” I cried into a microphone in the summer of 2020. I was addressing a crowd of nearly 15,000 people dressed in varying shades of white outside the Brooklyn Museum. Our uniform paid homage to a 1917 NAACP silent march for Black lynching victims. Now, more than a century later, we had gathered to honor the Black transgender people murdered during the coronavirus pandemic and before it. We chanted the often overlooked names of folks like Layleen Polanco, Tony McDade, Nina Pop, Dominique “Rem’mie” Fells, and Riah Milton. We imagined a world where Black trans people didn’t have to fight so hard to exist.

June 16, 2020 Trump signs an executive order listing federal priorities for police reforms. These include banning choke holds and forming a national database of police misconduct, but they fall short of what activists are calling for.

June 21, 2020 NASCAR announces that a noose has been found hanging in Black driver Bubba Wallace’s garage stall at the Talladega Superspeedway. Within a few days, the FBI determines it was not a hate crime but a pull rope that had been in the garage since the previous fall.

June 28, 2020 Mark and Patricia McCloskey wave guns, including a semi-automatic rifle, at a group of mostly Black protesters who are passing by their St. Louis house.

July 10, 2020 BLM Global Network Foundation moves from being under the fiscal sponsorship of Thousand Currents to the Tides Center. That month, Patrisse Cullors becomes the executive director of BLMGNF.

August 23, 2020 During a domestic-incident call in Kenosha, Wisconsin, officers attempt to arrest Jacob Blake, 29, who has a knife in his car. After trying to use a Taser, an officer shoots Blake several times, paralyzing him from the waist down.

August 25, 2020 Kyle Rittenhouse, a white 17-year-old, kills two white men and shoots another during protests in Kenosha. His actions are lauded by the right as self-defense and widely seen as vigilantism on the left.

August 26, 2020 The Milwaukee Bucks refuse to play in a first-round playoff game in protest of the Blake shooting. The NBA postpones all of its games until the 29th.

November 30, 2020 Ten BLM chapters, including those in D.C., Philadelphia, and Chicago, publish an open letter accusing BLMGNF leadership and Cullors of running the organization without “financial transparency, collective decision making, or collaboration on political analysis and vision.”

December 12, 2020 After a pro-Trump rally in Washington, D.C., Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio burns a Black Lives Matter banner that had been hanging from a church.

December 26, 2020 Miya Ponsetto, a 22-year-old from Southern California, tackles a Black teenager she accused of stealing her cell phone in the lobby of a Soho hotel. Her phone is later found in an Uber. The boy’s father, Grammy-winning jazz musician Keyon Harrold, posts video of the assault on his Instagram.

January 29, 2021 The Black Lives Matter movement is nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

February 23, 2021 Sharing detailed information about its finances for the first time, BLMGNF announces that it took in more than $90 million in 2020 and committed $21.7 million to official and unofficial BLM chapters, in addition to 30 Black-led local organizations.

March 16, 2021 Two mothers of Black people killed by police, Samaria Rice and Lisa Simpson, release a statement condemning Cullors, Tamika Mallory, Shaun King, Benjamin Crump, and others for “capitalizing our fight for justice”: “We don’t want or need y’all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals etc.”

April 10, 2021 The New York Post publishes an investigation into Cullors’s real-estate purchases. It reports that she bought four homes within a few years, including one in L.A. in March 2021 worth $1.4 million. BLMGNF denies that any organization funds were used to purchase property for Cullors.

April 11, 2021 Daunte Wright, 20, is pulled over by Officer Kim Potter in a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. Potter attempts to arrest him for an outstanding warrant, and a struggle ensues as two officers try to pull Wright from his car. Potter yells “Taser!” several times but pulls her gun instead and shoots Wright in the chest, killing him.

April 13, 2021 On the second day of protests in Minneapolis, Officer Potter and Brooklyn Center police chief Tim Gannon — who originally called the killing accidental — both resign.

April 20, 2021 Ma’Khia Bryant, 16, is killed by police in Columbus, Ohio, who were called after she appeared to threaten two other girls with a knife. Officer Nicholas Reardon shoots her shortly after arriving on the scene.

April 20, 2021 Former police officer Chauvin is found guilty of murdering George Floyd after ten and a half hours of deliberation by the jury. Crowds that are gathered at the spot where Floyd was killed, as well as outside the courtroom and across the country, erupt in cheers when the verdict is read.

May 27, 2021 Cullors announces she will step down from the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, emphasizing that while she is leaving the formal organization, the larger BLM movement has no single leader.

The BLM Mystery: Where Did the Money Go?

By Sean Campbell

In early April 2021, Ziploc bags filled with rocks and Ku Klux Klan flyers were thrown on lawns and dropped on street corners around Huntington Beach, California. “ White civil rights!” one flyer read. “ Our Ancestors settled the land, established the country, made the laws — we’re the majority, why shouldn’t we control our destiny???” Word began to circulate on social media that there would be a “White Lives Matter” rally in front of the Huntington Beach Pier on April 11 at 1 p.m.

Southern California’s Orange County has a century-long history of white supremacism. Klansmen patrolled Anaheim in white hoods and robes during the 1920s; in 1993, a Los Angeles Times headline asked if Huntington Beach was the “skinhead capital of the country.” Today, fewer than 2 percent of its residents identify as Black. But Tory Johnson didn’t care. He started Black Lives Matter Huntington Beach after the murder of George Floyd. He and his fellow protesters were tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. He went to jail for marching then, and he wasn’t going to let a racist rally occur in his city unchecked.

June 10, 2021 The BLM chapters that released the open letter in November 2020 release another, accusing BLMGNF of disorganization, hoarding resources, and a lack of accountability and writing that “nepotism, proximity to power, and access to resources became more important to the Network than making sure that they had a radical vision, objectives, and strategies.”

June 22, 2021 Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, calls out Shaun King in an Instagram post for publicly discussing an earlier conversation they had. She accuses him of profiting off the death of her son: “Personally I don’t know how you sleep at night. I never gave you permission to raise nothing. Along with the United States, you robbed me for the death of my son.” King says Benjamin Crump, who represented Rice at the time, asked him to help promote a fund-raiser for the family.

August 3, 2021 Missouri governor Mike Parson pardons the St. Louis couple who waved guns at Black Lives Matter protesters passing by their house in 2020. The pair pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges earlier in the summer.

September 1, 2021 Charges are brought against three police officers and two paramedics in Colorado in the death of Elijah McClain.

September 8, 2021 Virginia takes down the statue of Robert E. Lee on Richmond’s Monument Avenue, the last remaining Confederate memorial on a stretch that once had many.

November 2, 2021 Richie Floyd, a member of the Dream Defenders, a social-justice youth organization founded after Trayvon Martin’s killing, is elected to the St. Petersburg, Florida, City Council as a socialist.

The Freedom Fighters of Florida

By Sierra Lyons

In March 2012, with George Zimmerman still not charged for the killing of Trayvon Martin, three former student activists, Phillip Agnew, Ahmad Abuznaid, and Gabriel Pendas, issued a call to action on Facebook. Nailah Summers, then a student at the University of Florida, was on the conference call set up to discuss what could be done; she had gone on a school trip to Mississippi, and the work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was still present in her mind.

November 12, 2021 The LAPD announces that three teenagers are responsible for making hoax calls that repeatedly brought SWAT teams to the home of Melina Abdullah, a co-founder of the L.A. chapter of Black Lives Matter.

November 16, 2021 New polling shows a decline in support for the Black Lives Matter movement. By now, only 44 percent of people say they support BLM, as opposed to the 43 percent who oppose it. The year before, support had peaked at 52 percent after the murder of George Floyd.

November 19, 2021 Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two protesters and wounded another during demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin, after the police shooting of Jacob Blake, is found not guilty on all counts, including first-degree reckless homicide. Three days later, Rittenhouse goes on Tucker Carlson’s show to say he supports Black Lives Matter, though after being released on bond, he was reportedly seen being “serenaded by a group of adult men who sang the Proud Boys anthem.”

Standing Your Ground While Black

By Brittney Cooper

In 1892, at the height of the lynching crisis, Ida B. Wells proclaimed that “a Winchester rifle should have a place of honor in every black home, and it should be used for that protection which the law refuses to give. When the white man who is always the aggressor knows he runs as great a risk of biting the dust every time his Afro-American victim does, he will have greater respect for Afro-American life.”

The critical point for me in Wells’s manifesto for Black self-defense is not her overarching respect for the power of guns. It is her observation about where the aggression begins. Losing that thread of the argument, about who actually starts the fights, is the reason so much white aggression is seamlessly restyled as the right to “stand one’s ground,” to protect and defend one’s kith and kin. Conversely, Black self-defense is transposed into an act of unjustified aggression and met with fire and fury by both the state and self-deputized white citizens.

Do Black people have the right to defend themselves against acts of hostility and aggression, especially when the aggressors are white? When confronted with increasingly normalized acts of white aggression, do Black people have the right to stand our ground?

January 7, 2022 The three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery are sentenced to life in prison. Two, Travis McMichael and his father, Gregory, are not granted the possibility of parole. The third, William Bryan, will be eligible after serving 30 years in prison. From a letter read by Wanda Cooper-Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, at the sentencing hearing for the men who were convicted of her son’s murder.

“My youngest son, he was born on Mother’s Day of 1994. He had a smile so bright it lit up a room. He was a greedy baby that seemed like he was always searching for something to stick into his mouth. He was always a loving baby who seemed to never tire of hugs, cuddling, and kisses. He loved. He never hesitated to tell me, his sister, Jasmine, and his brother, Marcus, that he loved us. And your honor, we loved him back. He was messy. He sometimes refused to wear socks. Or take good care of his good clothing. I wish he would have cut and cleaned his toenails before he went out for that jog that day. I guess he would have if he knew he would be murdered. My family’s going to miss Ahmaud. We’re going to miss his jokes. His impersonations. His warm smile. These men deserve the maximum sentence for their crimes. Ahmaud never said a word to them. He never threatened them. He just wanted to be left alone. They were fully committed to their crimes. Let them be fully committed for the consequences. Your honor, I’m standing here before you as the mother of Ahmaud Arbery asking you to please give all three defendants who are responsible for the death of my son the maximum punishment in this court, which I do believe is life behind bars without the possible chance for parole.”         

January 13, 2022 In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Cullors explains why she stepped back from Black Lives Matter leadership, saying she felt judged and attacked from all sides and had to seek treatment for PTSD: “Nobody really understands the role of a movement leader, especially when it’s a Black woman or women in leadership.”

January 21, 2022 In Worcester, Massachusetts, local Black Lives Matter activists mark their 600th consecutive day of public action since George Floyd’s death.

January 24, 2022 New York’s new mayor, Eric Adams, promptly announces he will reintroduce NYPD plainclothes anti-crime units to target increasing gun violence. The controversial units were disbanded in June 2020 amid the summer of protests against police violence.

February 3, 2022 Jason Van Dyke, the former Chicago police officer who shot Laquan McDonald, is slated to be released from prison on good behavior after serving just over three years.

February 5, 2022 Trayvon Martin would have turned 27.

The Countless Lost Friendships

By Bridget Read

When Ashley Burch remembers her friend Trayvon Martin, she thinks of him walking around Carol City, the neighborhood north of Miami where they were teenagers together. They weren’t old enough to drive, so Trayvon walked nearly everywhere when he couldn’t catch the bus, sometimes so far that he would call Ashley to come pick him up. “With what?” Ashley would ask. He would joke that his Cadillac was in the shop — the nickname he had for his bicycle.

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A Guide to Project 2025

By Eugene Kiely , D'Angelo Gore and Robert Farley

Posted on September 10, 2024

Project 2025 provides a roadmap for “the next conservative President” to downsize the federal government and fundamentally change how it works, including the tax system, immigration enforcement, social welfare programs and energy policy, particularly those designed to address climate change.

It also wades deeply into the culture war that has been dividing the country. Project 2025 calls for abolishing the teaching of “‘critical race theory’ and ‘gender ideology'” in public schools, and “deleting” terms such as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” “gender equity,” and “reproductive health” from “every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant … and piece of legislation that exists.”

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has sought to tie Donald Trump to the 887-page book , which was written in part by the former president’s aides. Harris and Democrats refer to the plan as “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” and cite it as evidence (not always accurately) of what Trump will do as president, particularly on hot-button issues such as Social Security, Medicare and abortion.

For his part, Trump has claimed he knows nothing about the plan, and his campaign said that Project 2025 “should not be associated with the campaign.”

Here, we take a look at the plan: what’s in it, who wrote it and what the candidates have said about it.

Who funded and wrote Project 2025?

The project is being led and funded by the Heritage Foundation , a conservative public policy think tank founded in 1973. In addition to Heritage, there are more than 100 conservative organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board . Among those “ coalition partners ” are the Center for Immigration Studies, Moms for Liberty, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Tea Party Patriots, Turning Point USA and America First Legal Foundation, which is headed by Stephen Miller , a former Trump senior adviser.

The project’s policy agenda was published online as a book titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.” The book has 30 chapters, each credited to one or more of its 35 primary authors and editors — although the final product includes input from “hundreds of contributors,” the project’s organizers said in a press release .

It’s the ninth edition in the “Mandate for Leadership” series, the first of which was published in 1981, during the Reagan administration. According to its authors, earlier editions have had success in influencing government policies.

“The Reagan administration implemented nearly half of the ideas included in the first edition by the end of his first year in office, while the Trump administration embraced nearly 64% of the 2016 edition’s policy solutions after one year,” the Heritage Foundation said in a press release announcing Project 2025.

Some of the notable authors of this most recent version include Dr. Ben Carson , Christopher Miller and Russ Vought , who are all former Cabinet secretaries under Trump. Carson, who wrote the book’s chapter on housing, was the secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Miller, who wrote the chapter on defense, was an acting secretary of the Department of Defense; and Vought, who directed the Office of Management and Budget, wrote the chapter about the executive office of the U.S. president.

Ken Cuccinelli , who was a deputy secretary for Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, and Peter Navarro , Trump’s White House adviser on trade, also penned book chapters.

“In fact, at least 140 people who worked in the Trump administration had a hand in Project 2025,” a CNN review found.

The book is one of “ four pillars ” that will be available to the next conservative president. The other pillars are:

• A personnel database, which will allow Project 2025 coalition members to “review and voice their recommendations” for appointments.
• A “Presidential Administration Academy” to teach new hires “how the government functions and how to function in government.”
• A second document — “the Playbook” — which will include “transition plans” to allow the next president to implement plans quickly.

What does Project 2025 propose?

Project 2025 attempts to put “in one place a consensus view of how major federal agencies must be governed.”

We cannot summarize all of its proposals, but here are some examples:

Abortion: Project 2025 describes the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v. Wade, as “just the beginning.”

“Conservatives in the states and in Washington, including in the next conservative Administration, should push as hard as possible to protect the unborn in every jurisdiction in America,” the book states. “In particular, the next conservative President should work with Congress to enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support while deploying existing federal powers to protect innocent life and vigorously complying with statutory bans on the federal funding of abortion.”

The book calls on the Department of Health and Human Services to protect “the health and well-being of all Americans,” beginning at conception, and to end mandatory health insurance coverage of Ella, an emergency contraceptive that Project 2025 describes as a “potential abortifacient.” It also advocates using an 1873 anti-vice law to block abortion pills from being sent via the mail. (More about that later.)

The book also calls for ending federal funding for “Planned Parenthood and all other abortion providers and redirect[ing] funding to health centers that provide real health care to women.” As we have written before , Planned Parenthood provides more than abortion services. In its 2022-2023 annual report , Planned Parenthood said it provided 4.6 million tests and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, 2.25 million contraception services, 464,021 cancer screenings and prevention services (mostly breast exams and Pap tests), and 1.1 million pregnancy tests and prenatal services.

Government ‘efficiency’: Project 2025 proposes cutting federal spending and firing “supposedly ‘un-fireable’ federal bureaucrats.” (Separately, Trump has praised businessman Elon Musk for firing employees, and floated the idea of putting Musk in charge of a government efficiency commission.)

The project recommends privatizing government functions, including the National Weather Service, Transportation Security Administration, or TSA, and the National Flood Insurance Program, as well as eliminating the Department of Education and scores of programs, bureaus and offices throughout government. The project also calls for removing the Biden administration’s expansion of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in education, to include sexual orientation and gender identity. The courts have blocked the rule from taking effect.

As or other departments, the project calls for the “wholesale overhaul” of the Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, the “top-to-bottom overhaul” of the Department of Justice, and a return “to the right mission, the right size, and the right budget” at the Department of Homeland Security. The Justice Department overhaul would include “a plan to end immediately any policies, investigations, or cases that run contrary to law or Administration policies.”

One frequent target for cuts are offices and programs that promote clean energy and monitor or mitigate the effects of climate change.

For example, the project calls for the dismantling of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration , which conducts research and issues reports on climate change. Project 2025 says “many” of NOAA’s functions can be “eliminated, sent to other agencies, privatized, or placed under the control of states and territories.”

It also calls to eliminate or overhaul the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations and the Office of State and Community Energy Programs , which works with communities “to significantly accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies.” Similarly, it recommends the elimination or “reform” of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy , calling for an end to the agency’s “focus on climate change and green subsidies.”

Tax policy: Project 2025 calls for “low tax rates” and minimal “interference with the operation of the free market and free enterprise.”

Specifically, the plan calls for abolishing the seven tax brackets for federal income taxes — 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% — and creating a “two-rate individual tax system of 15 percent and 30 percent that eliminates most deductions, credits and exclusions.” It doesn’t say what specific deductions, credits and exclusions should be eliminated.

It also calls for reducing the corporate tax rate from 21% to 18%. The corporate tax rate was 35% before Trump signed the Tax Cut and Jobs Act in 2017, which cut the tax rate to 21%. The capital gains tax — which ranges from 0% to 28% , depending on your income and type of asset — would also be cut for a high of 20% to 15%. The IRS says that most taxpayers currently pay 15%.

“It’s hard to know who gets hurt by this because they never say what the standard deduction is. For low-income people, moderate-income people standard deductions [are] a big deal,” Howard Gleckman , a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said about Project 2025’s tax proposals in an interview with CBS News . “But, as you say, there are seven rates and three of them — 32%, 35% and 37% are higher than 30%, so it’s pretty clear that high income people who are currently paying a top rate paying higher than 30% would benefit significantly. They are also going to benefit substantially from the lower capital gains rates. Many of them are paying capital gains almost at 25%, and in this proposal, they’d be paying as low as 15%. So, a big deal for high income people. Impossible to know what it means for lower income people.”

Trump has offered his own tax plans , which include making the 2017 tax cuts permanent and further reducing the corporate tax rate.

Immigration: Project 2025 seeks to reinstate “every rule related to immigration that was issued during the Trump Administration,” and calls for new immigration policies and a reorganization of all immigration operations.

The book recommends tightening asylum requirements, reducing the number of refugees, and reinstating Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols, also known as Remain in Mexico program, which required immigrants to wait in Mexico during their immigration proceedings.

It seeks “the overturning of the Flores Settlement Agreement ,” a 1997 court-approved agreement that serves as a national policy on how to humanely treat minors who enter the country illegally. Among other things, the agreement prohibits the federal government from detaining minors for more than 20 days.

It also includes proposals to “[e]liminate or significantly reduce the number of visas issued to foreign students from enemy nations,” cut the number of guest worker visas and repeal the diversity visa program that awards visas on a lottery basis to countries with low immigration to the U.S.

As president, Trump unsuccessfully sought to repeal the diversity visa program and move from a family-based to a merit-based system for admitting immigrants. Project 2025 also calls for a merit-based system.

The book also labels these two programs as “unlawful”: the Humanitarian Parole Program for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, which bars the deportation of certain people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.

Social welfare programs: Project 2025 cites fraud and waste in safety net programs and calls for eliminating or reducing basic benefits for low-income individuals and families.

For Medicaid, Project 2025 proposes adding work requirements for beneficiaries and “time limits or lifetime caps … to disincentivize permanent dependence.” The health insurance program for low-income Americans covered nearly 74 million people in May, according to the latest data.

The conservative plan also calls for tightening work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program , formerly known as food stamps, and changing the eligibility requirements for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families , which was created by the overhaul of the welfare system in 1996. New eligibility requirements would also reduce the number of students served by the national school breakfast and lunch programs — which were described in the book as “inefficient, wasteful” programs.

Project 2025 also seeks to incentivize at-home child care. “Instead of providing universal day care, funding should go to parents either to offset the cost of staying home with a child or to pay for familial, in-home childcare,” the plan states.

The plan calls for the elimination of Head Start , a program that funds education, health and social services programs for low-income children under 5 years old.

What has Trump said about it?

Back when Project 2025 was just getting started , Trump spoke at the Heritage Foundation’s annual leadership conference on April 21, 2022, and appeared to refer to the project, saying, “This is a great group, and they’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do and what your movement will do when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America. And that’s coming.”

But Trump has since pivoted sharply against the plan.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on July 5. “I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

A week later, on July 11, Trump again took to Truth Social to further distance himself from the plan.

“I know nothing about Project 2025,” Trump wrote . “I have not seen it, have no idea who is in charge of it, and, unlike our very well received Republican Platform, had nothing to do with it. The Radical Left Democrats are having a field day, however, trying to hook me into whatever policies are stated or said. It is pure disinformation on their part. By now, after all of these years, everyone knows where I stand on EVERYTHING!”

In a July 22 speech in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump accused Democrats of trying to falsely tie him to the plan. He said that “the other side is going around trying to make me sound extreme, like I’m an extremist. I’m not. I’m a person with great common sense. I’m not an extremist at all. Like, some on the right, severe right came up with this Project 25, and I don’t even know. I mean some of them, I know who they are, but they’re very, very conservative. … They’re sort of the opposite of the radical left, OK? You have the radical left and you have the radical right, and they come up with this. … I don’t know what the hell it is. It’s Project 25. ‘He’s involved in Project …’ And then they read some of the things, and they are extreme. I mean, they’re seriously extreme, but I don’t know anything about it. I don’t want to know anything about it.”

Trump went even further in his rejection of the plan in an interview on “Fox & Friends” on July 25, claiming Democratic efforts to tie him to it were “pure disinformation.”

“It’s a group of very, very conservative people and they wrote a document that many of the points are fine,” Trump said. “Many of the points are absolutely ridiculous. I have nothing to do with the document. I’ve never seen the document. I’ve seen certain things that are said in it. And it’s a group of very conservative people that probably like me, but it doesn’t matter because it doesn’t speak for me.

“They wrote something that I disagree with in many cases — and in some cases, you agree. But it’s like a group of radical left people that write something and, you know, people get angry by it. This is a document I know nothing about. It’s called Project 25 — I heard about it a week ago — and has nothing to do with me whatsoever.

“But, of course, our friends that are Democrats — radical left Democrats — they take the document, which is, I guess, pretty big and thorough, and they scour through it. And anything that’s bad in there or that’s a little bit less than mainstream, they take it and they make a big deal out of it. … I haven’t seen the document. I don’t intend to really see the document. And it’s a group of people that got together that wrote some kind of a dream document for them. But it has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

Five days later, on July 30, the day the Heritage Foundation announced that Paul Dans, director of Project 2025, was stepping down, the Trump campaign put out a statement on “Project 2025’s Demise.”

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” co-campaign managers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita stated. “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign— it will not end well for you.”

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said the project had “completed exactly what it set out to do: bringing together over 110 leading conservative organizations to create a unified conservative vision, motivated to devolve power from the unelected administrative state, and returning it to the people.” Roberts said the project was always slated “to conclude its policy drafting after the two party conventions this year, and we are sticking to that timeline.” Although the policy writing portion of the project was finished, he said, “Project 2025 will continue our efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels—federal, state, and local.”

Roberts also stressed that Project 2025 was a “tool … built for any future administration to use.”

What have Democrats said about it?

In several cases, Democrats have gone beyond the facts, calling it “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda” and claiming, based on the conservative proposal, that Trump will implement policies that he says he opposes.

“When you read it, you will see Donald Trump intends to cut Social Security and Medicare,” Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, said at a July 23 rally in Milwaukee, for example.

Project 2025 does lay out “four goals and principles” for Medicare “reform,” but there is nothing in the book that calls for cutting Social Security, which the authors of the project call a “myth.”

Furthermore, Trump has said that he has no plans to cut Social Security or Medicare. When he was president, Trump did not propose cutting Social Security’s retirement benefits, and his budgets included bipartisan proposals to reduce the growth of Medicare without cutting benefits.

Project 2025 also came up many times during the Democratic National Convention in August.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, who spoke on the third night of the DNC, called the plan “Donald Trump’s roadmap to ban abortion in all 50 states.” He also claimed that the plan “puts limits on contraception” and “threatens access to IVF,” or in vitro fertilization.

The book does suggest enforcing the Comstock Act, an 1873 anti-vice law , to prevent the mailing of abortion pills, which are used in more than half of U.S. abortions. But Trump, when asked in an August interview about enforcing the law, indicated he would not.

As for contraception, Project 2025 does not generally call for limiting common methods of contraception, such as birth control pills or intrauterine devices, or IUDs. Instead, the book specifically proposes eliminating mandatory insurance coverage for Ella, an emergency contraceptive that the book’s authors say could induce abortions. But that concern  is   not   backed by science, as emergency contraceptives work by preventing ovulation and pregnancy.

The proposal also says that the government “should end taxpayer funding” of Planned Parenthood , which provides abortion and contraception services, and that the government should maintain religious and moral exemptions for employers who do not wish to cover contraceptives for workers.

In the case of IVF, the book does not propose outlawing the reproductive procedure in which eggs from ovaries are fertilized with sperm to create embryos that are later implanted in the uterus. But language in the plan could be interpreted to support the idea that embryos or fetuses should be granted the same rights as a person who has been born. That could lead to legal challenges around IVF because unused embryos are often discarded.

However, Trump has said he supports both contraceptives and IVF . He also has proposed mandating that the federal government or health insurance companies “pay for all costs associated with IVF treatment.”

The Harris campaign also has paid for TV ads that say Project 2025 proposes “eliminating the Department of Education” while “requiring the government to monitor women’s pregnancies.”

The conservative plan does say that “Congress should shutter” the Education Department “and return control of education to the states.” Trump also supports abolishing that federal department.

In addition, in a section about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the policy agenda calls for the improved reporting of abortion data, including through legislation that requires “states, as a condition of federal Medicaid payments for family planning services, to report streamlined variables in a timely manner.”

But Trump has not made such a proposal. In an April interview with the magazine Time, Trump was asked whether he thought states that had banned abortion “should monitor women’s pregnancies so they can know if they’ve gotten an abortion after the ban.” In response, Trump said, “I think they might do that,” adding that would be left to “the individual states” – just as he says abortion laws should be determined by each state.

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through  our “Donate” page . If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104. 

The Matter of Black Living

The aesthetic experiment of racial data, 1880–1930.

Autumn Womack

288 pages | 7 color plates, 18 halftones | 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 | © 2022

Black Studies

History: American History

Literature and Literary Criticism: American and Canadian Literature

Media Studies

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“With new historical insight and indispensable analysis of the social survey, the photograph, and the motion picture, Autumn Womack calls for an urgent rethinking of the information technologies, data regimes and disciplinary measures employed to enumerate black social life. From reading Zora Neal Hurston’s filmic practices through an aesthetic of overexposure to conceptualizing “looking out” as a capacious mode of perception and praxis, The Matter of Black Living reveals the ruptures and possibilities of black creative innovation. A brilliant read.”

Simone Browne, University of Texas at Austin

“ The Matter of Black Living elucidates the breadth and the reach of black ontological possibility and the historical trajectory of black self-expression that (white) modernist practices forgot. Womack cogently presents the unwieldy negotiations of social knowledge and data collection that have impacted African American cultural productions. . . This book is thoroughly researched and argued. It will be essential for readers of modernist African American literature, visual culture studies, and American studies.”

Kimberly Juanita Brown, Dartmouth College

“The boldness and brilliance of The Matter of Black Living lies in its innovative vision and its exhilarating methodological practices which ultimately widen and deepen the story of pre-Harlem Renaissance black life. The profundity of Womack’s archival research and the eloquence of her cultural analyses illuminate the intricacies of the efforts in which black peoples repeatedly undisciplined the racial data chronically weaponized against them. In doing so, they mobilized new technologies to articulate the capaciousness and incessant vitality of blackness itself.”

Daphne A. Brooks, Yale University

“Womack has penned a highly original and revelatory book. . . . A tour de force that reconceptualizes the documentation of black life: the creative interventions and experiments in the longue durée of black disfranchisement and precarity.”

Ethnic and Racial Studies

"Womack provocatively argues for understanding the self-representation of Black communities as a form of resistance to the reductive understanding of African American existence as a problem. . . Building on W. E. B. Du Bois's insights about how Black Americans were forced to split themselves into a living self that could celebrate the complexity of their communities and their struggles and the representations of themselves seen through white eyes, Womack considers three forms of self-representation embraced by leading Black thinkers in the early 20th century: the social survey, photography, and film."

"Autumn Womack has authored a text that impels the reader to embrace the aesthetic and technological intersections between Black life and the data that social scientists hoped would represent it."

Technology and Culture

" The Matter of Black Living is a stunning book, a noteworthy contribution to the study of postbellum African American literature. Just as the Black artists at the heart of Womack’s book have 'made data move,' so has Womack enlivened the apparently cold, static, and empirical forms of data science in order to break open the story of how those artists found life in them."

Nadia Nurhussein | Genre

"Through its stunning archival recoveries, its enlivening of turn-of-the-century black aesthetic and epistemological experiments, and its radical un-disciplining of visual and literary studies, The Matter of Black Living offers an urgent reconsideration of how and why we continue to reach for data to index ongoing realities of white supremacy, antiblack violence, and racialized genocide. Looking back to look forward, and giving us new and critically important ways to read the forms and practices of the reform era, Womack offers an approach to racial data that is fundamentally ambivalent, unsettled, and searching—in other words, full of life."

Modernism/modernity

Table of Contents

MLA: MLA William Sanders Scarborough Prize Won

Modernist Studies Association: Modernist Studies Association--First Book Prize Shortlist

Total Mobilization

Roy Scranton

The Mourner’s Song

James Tatum

Culture and Language at Crossed Purposes

Jerome McGann

The Daily Henry James

Henry James

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UPDATED Sep. 13, 2024, at 12:57 PM

How un popular is Joe Biden?

An updating calculation of the president's approval rating, accounting for each poll's recency, sample size, methodology and house effects..

95% OF POLLS PROJECTED TO FALL IN THIS RANGE

Our latest coverage

How biden compares with past presidents, donald trump 2017-2021, barack obama 2009-17, george w. bush 2001-09, bill clinton 1993-2001, george h.w. bush 1989-93, ronald reagan 1981-89, jimmy carter 1977-81, gerald ford 1974-77, richard nixon 1969-74, lyndon b. johnson 1963-69, john f. kennedy 1961-63, dwight d. eisenhower 1953-61, harry s. truman 1945-53.

When the dates of tracking polls from the same pollster overlap, only the most recent version is shown.

Design and development by Ryan Best , Aaron Bycoffe , Holly Fuong , Christopher Groskopf , Ritchie King , Ella Koeze , Dhrumil Mehta , Jasmine Mithani , Mary Radcliffe , Anna Wiederkehr and Julia Wolfe . Statistical model by G. Elliott Morris . Cooper Burton , Holly Fuong , Andrea Jones-Rooy , Dhrumil Mehta , Mary Radcliffe , Nathaniel Rakich , Derek Shan , Geoffrey Skelley and Julia Wolfe contributed research. Editing by Sarah Frostenson and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux . Copy editing by Cooper Burton , Holly Fuong , Alex Kimball , Jennifer Mason , Andrew Mangan , Maya Sweedler and Curtis Yee . Send us an email.

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