Black Lives Matter Protests Across the Urban-Rural Divide

• In Event: Inequalities and social justice in the CJS: Remembering Anat Kimchi

Abstract

For the past decade, over 1,000 civilians have been killed by police in the US annually, with these killings disproportionately impacting Black Americans. This widespread and continued racially disparate treatment by police sparked the largest social movement in the country’s history, as ‘Black Lives Matter’ and ‘Defund the Police’ became national rallying cries across the nation in 2020, demanding accountability and police reform. Little scholarly attention has been paid to the effects of these protests on subsequent lethal police violence, and nearly no studies have considered how this protest movement may be differentially experienced among rural communities. Using county-level analyses, the current study examines lethal police violence before and after the death of George Floyd and interrogates whether the effects of protest activity are contingent on rurality. Findings reveal differential risk factors, protest engagement, and killing outcomes across the urban-rural divide, suggesting that future studies should expand the focus of this literature beyond the largest urban centers.

Author

• Torri Sperry, University of Maryland