Alicia Garza to Deliver 2024 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights on March 4

Alicia Garza, Principal at Black Futures Lab and co-founder of the Black Lives Matter international movement, will deliver the 2024 Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights.

Garza will be in conversation with Crystal Feimster, Associate Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, and History at Yale University, on March 4, 2024. 

The event will take place in Room 127 in the Sterling Law Building from 4:30 to 6:00 p.m. and is open to the Yale community. Registration is required. To register, community members should write to gruber.events@yale.edu.

An author, political strategist, and organizer, Garza is known globally for her work to end state-sanctioned violence and oppression against Black people. In 2013, she helped create #BlackLivesMatter, spurring the Black Lives Matter movement. She also co-founded the Black Lives Matter Global Network, which today comprises 40 chapters across four countries.

More recently, Garza founded Black Futures Lab, which seeks to transform Black communities into constituencies that change the way power operates — at local, state, and national levels. Black Futures Lab’s Black Census Project, first launched in 2018, is thought to be the largest survey of Black respondents ever conducted in the United States.

For more than two decades, Garza has organized around issues of health, student services and rights, rights for domestic workers, ending police brutality, antiracism, and violence against transgender and gender non-conforming people of color. She serves as Senior Advisor to the President at the National Domestic Workers Alliance, one of the nation’s preeminent organizations that advocates for domestic workers. She is also the co-founder of Supermajority, which advances women’s political power.

Garza writes regularly about politics, race, gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Her work has appeared in such prominent publications as TIME, MSNBC, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, ELLE, and Essence. She has been featured on the cover of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World issue (September 2020), TIME’s 100 Women of the Year list (March 2020), Fortune’s 40 Under 40, Fast Company’s Queer 50 list, and Politico 50. On three occasions, she has been named to The Root’s list of 100 African American achievers and influencers.

Garza is the recipient of numerous accolades and honors. She has received the Sydney Peace Award, the Adweek Beacon Award, Glamour’s Women of the Year Award, and Marie Claire’s New Guard Award. BET’s Black Girls Rock Awards has also recognized Garza as a Community Change Agent.

Garza published her first book, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (Penguin Random House), in 2020. She also hosts the podcast Lady Don’t Take No. Garza is a 2002 graduate of the University of California, San Diego, where she delivered the Commencement keynote address in 2021.

The Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Women’s Rights and the Gruber Distinguished Lecture in Global Justice feature speakers whose exceptional achievements have served the causes of global justice and women's rights. The lecture is a core component of the Gruber Program for Global Justice and Women's Rights, a Yale University program administered by Yale Law School.