Thandiwe Abdullah

Thandiwe Abdullah is an American political activist best known for her support of the Black Lives Matter movement. She is a co-founder of the Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard which advocates for the reduction of police in schools.

Biography

Abdullah is the daughter of Melina Abdullah, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter LA. She grew up in the Crenshaw District of Los Angeles and has Jewish heritage on her mother's side. She majored in African-American studies at Howard University. and marching in protest of the murder of Oscar Grant when she was six. In 2013 and 2014, at the age of 10, Abdullah took part in the several protest marches, including the protests following the killing of Trayvon Martin and the Ferguson protests that arose in response to the killing of Michael Brown in 2014, and she took notice of the lack of teenagers and other youth. This led her to co-found Black Lives Matter Youth Vanguard in 2015. In 2018, Abdullah addressed a crowd of 500,000 at the Women's March in Los Angeles.

Abdullah created Black Lives Matter in Schools when she was 15, an effort that promotes racial justice that was eventually adopted by the Los Angeles School Board. for being "one of her generation's most powerful voices on issues relating to social justice".