Black Lives Matter After the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed, eighteen-year-old African American in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement held protests calling for greater police accountability and comprehensive reform of the criminal justice system. The Brown shooting was only one of several highly publicized killings of African Americans around that time. This photo was taken in January 2015, when Black Lives Matter demonstrators marched in St. Louis, near Ferguson.