Burke, Tarana

Impact on the world

Working with young Black girls in Selma, Alabama, Burke began using “me too” as a phrase of solidarity and “empowerment through empathy” through her nonprofit Just Be Inc., founded in 2006; when the phrase went viral as a hashtag in October 2017 following the Harvey Weinstein allegations, Facebook reported more than 12 million reactions connected to #MeToo within 24 hours, and actress Alyssa Milano publicly credited Burke as the movement's originator. Time named Burke among its “Silence Breakers” 2017 Person of the Year honorees, and she has since published two New York Times bestsellers — “You Are Your Best Thing” (2021, with Brené Brown) and “Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement” (2021) — while continuing to lead the nonprofit me too. International, insisting the movement center survivors, and particularly survivors of color, rather than celebrity court cases.

Life & background

Born September 12, 1973, in the Bronx, New York, Burke became involved in activism as a teenager through the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement, organizing around housing inequality and racial discrimination. She attended Alabama State University, then moved to Selma, Alabama, where she worked with survivors of sexual violence and, in 2003, co-founded Jendayi Aza, an African-centered rites-of-passage program for Black girls that evolved into Just Be Inc. in 2006 — the organization through which she first began using “me too.” She has served as managing director of the Philadelphia arts organization Art Sanctuary and as a curatorial consultant for Selma's National Voting Rights Museum, work that led to a consulting role on Ava DuVernay's 2014 film “Selma.” She received the 2019 Sydney Peace Prize and continues to speak, write, and organize nationally as Co-Founder and Chief Vision Officer of me too. International.

Sources

1. Encyclopædia Britannica; National Women's History Museum; Black Enterprise