How Black women coined the ‘say her name’ rallying cry before Biden’s State of the Union address

Marjorie Taylor Greene wore a T-shirt to Thursday night’s State of the Union address that carried a seemingly simple message: Say Her Name.

The hard-line Republican congresswoman from Georgia, who was decked out in a red MAGA hat and other regalia, borrowed the phrase from Black racial justice activists who have been calling attention to the extrajudicial deaths of Black women at the hands of police and vigilantes.

However, Greene used the rallying cry to successfully goad President Joe Biden into saying the name Laken Riley, a nursing student from Georgia whose death is now at the center of U.S. immigration debate. An immigrant from Venezuela, who entered the U.S. illegally, has been arrested in Riley’s case and charged with murder.

Riley’s name is a rallying cry for Republicans criticizing the president’s handling of the record surge of immigrants entering the country through the U.S-Mexico border.

The origins of the ‘Say Her Name’ rallying cry date back well before Greene donned the T-shirt.

Who first coined the phrase ‘Say Her Name’ in protest?

The phrase was popularized by civil rights activist, law professor and executive director of the African American Policy Institute Kimberlé Crenshaw in 2015, following the death of Sandra Bland. Bland, a 28-year-old Black woman, was found dead in a Texas jail cell a few days after she was arrested during a traffic stop. Her family questioned the circumstances of her death and the validity of the traffic stop and the following year settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the police department.

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