May 2015

The Chicago City Council passed a reparations ordinance providing $5.5 million to survivors of systematic torture by Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and his subordinates, who tortured over 200 predominantly Black men between 1972 and 1991 to extract confessions. The package included monetary compensation, free City College tuition, a public memorial, and formal teaching of the Burge torture history in Chicago public schools.

Legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw and the African American Policy Forum launched the #SayHerName campaign in May 2015 to document and publicize cases of Black women killed by police, who were often absent from mainstream Black Lives Matter narratives. The campaign named Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Michelle Cusseaux, Tanisha Anderson, and others. Crenshaw's intersectionality framework was applied to argue that race-only analysis failed Black women.