Gestural Legacy: Bridging the gap between the Black Church and the Black Lives Matter Movement

Abstract

On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, a black teenager in Ferguson, Missouri, was shot and killed by white police officer Darren Wilson. Wilson was not convicted for the shooting despite reports that Brown was not armed or dangerous. As part of the fight against socially sanctioned black death, the Black Lives Matter movement adopted “Hands up!” as both its verbal and gestural symbol for the beginning of a national racial justice revolution. This image is not new to black consciousness; raised hands in the Black Church have symbolized submission, strength, and redemption through what has come to be called “praise hands.” Through an exploration of the two gestures in juxtaposition, “Hands up!” maintains cultural capital and geo-social transience – transmission across geographical space and social spheres – because the gesture itself is embedded in the collective memory of some black folk through the frameworks of performative vulnerability and surrogation. By rethinking the role and shape of vulnerability, particularly that of the body to larger social constraints as displayed
through surrogated gestures like praise hands and “Hands up!,” modes of resistance must also be renegotiated to include these acts of vulnerability as imperative to sociopolitical change.