(JS) Hi, I’m Jackie Strohm, the Prevention & Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. Welcome to this episode of History You Should Know, part of the PA Centered Podcast.

To celebrate and highlight stories of people who advanced the anti-sexual violence movement, particularly Black women, we are sharing a series of shorter episodes so you can learn all about the people and events that contributed to our movement

During today’s episode we’re going to highlight an incredible survivor, advocate, activist, and community organizer who continues to make history and inspire us.

In October 2017, the hashtag “#MeToo” went viral after actress Alyssa Milano and other women used it to tweet about the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations. But that phrase originated more than a decade prior and for a different reason.

In 2003, survivor and activist Tarana Burke founded the nonprofit, Just Be Inc, a program focused on the health, well-being, and wholeness of brown girls between ages 12-18. Burke has shared that the “me too movement” and the idea for Just Be Inc. originated in 1997 when she met Heaven, a young girl who confided in her about her stepfather sexually assaulting her. 

Burke writes, “I could not muster the energy to tell her that I understood, that I connected, that I could feel her pain. I couldn’t help her release her shame, or impress upon her that nothing that happened to her was her fault. I could not find the strength to say out loud the words that were ringing in my head over and over again as she tried to tell me what she had endured….I watched her walk away from me as she tried to recapture her secrets and tuck them back into their hiding place. I watched her put her mask back on and go back into the world like she was all alone and I couldn’t even bring myself to whisper…me too.”

Tarana Burke officially began using the phrase “Me Too” in 2006 on Just Be’s Myspace page. In 2007, Burke renamed her organization to Me Too, and moved to Philadelphia in 2008 where she worked at a number of nonprofits. While in Philadelphia, community activist Aishah Shahidah Simmons, helped her connect with young women who needed help. Through the Me Too movement, Burke facilitated workshops in workplaces, faith communities, and schools. 
In a 2014 video on Instagram from the March to End Rape Culture in Philadelphia, Burke can be seen wearing a “me too” shirt and talking about the movement. She said, “‘me too’ is a movement to, among other things, radicalize the notion of mass healing. As a community, we create a lot of space for fighting and pushing back, and not enough for connecting and healing.” 

Burke was born and raised in The Bronx, New York. She grew up in a low-income, working-class family in a housing project and was raped and sexually assaulted both as a child and a teenager. 

From a young age, Burke developed a passion for activism and community organizing. In the late 1980s, she joined an organization focused on youth development. As a teenager, Burke led campaigns and launched initiatives around issues of housing inequality, racial discrimination, and economic injustice. Fueled by her passion for activism, she decided to attend Alabama State University, a Historically Black University, to further develop her organizing skills. 

After graduating college, she moved to Selma, Alabama where she worked with young people, many of whom were survivors of sexual violence. She once decided to seek advice from a local rape-crisis center because these girls needed help. But when she got there, she was told rather coldly that the center would work only with girls who were referred from the local police department after they filed a police report. She thought to herself: "Who is going to do that?”

In 2017, after the hashtag #metoo went viral, celebrities, including Milano, were criticized for co-opting Burke’s work without giving her credit. 

Burke responded on Twitter saying, “It made my heart swell to see women using this idea. One that we call ‘empowerment through empathy” to not only show the world how widespread and pervasive sexual violence is, but also to let other survivors know they are not alone. The point of the work we’ve done over the last decade with the #metoo movement is to let women, particularly young women of color, know that they are not alone. It’s a movement. It’s beyond a hashtag. It’s the start of a larger conversation and a movement for radical community healing.” 

As the #MeToo movement has grown, white feminists have also been criticized for co-opting Black women’s organizing.

Time Magazine named Burke, among a group of other prominent activists dubbed "the silence breakers", as the Time Person of the Year for 2017. In an interview on the Today Show she said, “I could never imagine this. I could never have envisioned something that would change the world. I was trying to change my community.”

Since then she has become the Senior Director at Girls for Gender Equity in Brooklyn, and presented at public speaking events across the country, including PCAR’s 2019 National Sexual Assault Conference in Philadelphia.

Burke continues to lead Me Too, which provides healing resources and spaces for survivors, including Survivor Leadership Training, Community Healing Circles, and a Survivor Healing Series.

In February 2021, Me Too co-launched the campaign, We, As Ourselves, with TIME’S UP and the National Women’s Law Center. This campaign seeks to change the conversation about sexual violence, its impact on Black communities, and to spark a nuanced conversation about Black survivorhood. 

Burke is quoted as saying, “The goal is to amplify the voices of Black survivors to shine a light on the issue of sexual violence in the Black community in ways that we haven't seen over the last few years as the topic of sexual violence has been at the forefront. We haven't seen enough focus on and conversation about Black survivors. That’s the big picture of what we're trying to do.”

Thanks for listening to this episode of History You Should Know, part of the PA Centered Podcast. To learn more about Tarana Burke and the #metoo movement, check out the resources shared in the episode description. To learn more about the history of the anti-sexual violence movement, check out PCAR’s free History and Philosophy eLearning course at campus.nsvrc.org.