Tarana Burke
American activist who started the MeToo movement.
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Lore & Background
Tarana Burke was born in The Bronx, New York, and attended Catholic primary school and Herbert H. Lehman High School. Her passion for community organizing began in the late 1980s when she joined the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement. She attended Alabama State University and later Auburn University at Montgomery, where she organized press conferences and protests focused on racial justice. After graduating college, she moved to Selma, Alabama, in the late 1990s.
Reader's Guide
Her work shifted public discourse on sexual violence, empowering survivors to share their experiences. Burke's activism, rooted in racial and economic justice, highlights the intersectionality of sexual violence. Her legacy includes two New York Times bestsellers and a Harvard case study, cementing her impact on social justice and survivor advocacy.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Tarana Burke (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Word definitions: the Codexery glossary, each quoted from its Wikipedia article.
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