Patrisse Marie Khan-Cullors Brignac[1] (née Cullors-Brignac; born June 20, 1983) is an American activist, artist, and writer who co-founded the Black Lives Matter movement.

Cullors recalled that in a fight with prison officers, he was allegedly choked, beaten up brutally, and was forced to drink toilet water.

[9] Cullors grew up in a Section 8 apartment in Van Nuys, a poor and largely Mexican-American neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.

[19][20] She went onto acquire a degree in religion and philosophy at UCLA, as well as a MFA from the Roski School of Art and Design at the University of Southern California.

[25][26] Along with community organizers and friends Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, Cullors founded Black Lives Matter.

[29] Cullors created the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter in 2013 to corroborate Garza's use of the phrase in making a Facebook post about the Martin case.

[30] Cullors further described her impetus for pushing for African-American rights stemming from her 19-year-old brother's brutalization during imprisonment in Los Angeles County jails.

[31] Cullors and her BLM co-founders, Garza and Tometi, set out to build a decentralized movement governed by consensus of a members' collective and in 2015, a network of chapters was formed.

[32] She credits social media being instrumental in revealing violence against African Americans, saying: "On a daily basis, every moment, black folks are being bombarded with images of our death ...

"[34][35] In May 2021 (after holding the position for six years which included setting up the organization's infrastructure) Cullors resigned from her formal role as executive director of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, to focus on her second book and a multi-year TV deal with Warner Bros. She said that her resignation had nothing to do with alleged attempts to discredit her and that it had been planned for over a year.

[30] The group advocated for a civilian commission to oversee the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department in order to curb abuses by officers.

Cullors co-founded the prison activist organization Dignity and Power Now, which succeeded in advocating for a civilian oversight board.

[38] She is also a board member of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, having led a think tank on state and vigilante violence for the 2014 Without Borders Conference.

[40] Cullors defines herself as a prison, police and "militarization" abolitionist,[41] a position she says is inspired by "a legacy of black-led anti-colonial struggle in the United States and throughout the Americas".

[42] She also favors reparations for what she describes as "the historical pains and damage caused by European settler colonialism", in various forms, such as "financial restitution, land redistribution, political self-determination, culturally relevant education programs, language recuperation, and the right to return (or repatriation)".

The book has two parts, All the Bones We Could Find, which narrates her adolescence, and Black Lives Matter, which explains how those experiences led up to her to co-establishing the social justice group.

[8] In the 13th chapter A Call, A Response, Cullors outlines the first series of marches she, Garza and Tometi organized in the wake of Zimmerman's acquittal.

[54] Her second book was released by St Martin's Press on 25 January 2022, titled An Abolitionist's Handbook: 12 Steps to Change Yourself and the World.

[a][65][66] On January 3, 2023, Cullors's cousin Keenan Anderson died after an incident involving Los Angeles Police officers following a traffic accident.

Cullors resigned from leadership of the Foundation in May 2021, and later revealed psychological exhaustion from the controversy, stating that she was receiving treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder.