Like many of those in the #BlackLivesMatter movement, Elzie came into activism not through an organization or institution, but through Twitter. Many of those new activists and organizers, like Elzie, have been women. As a result, the visible leadership of Ferguson protest, in comparison to that of past civil-rights struggles, has been much less male. I talked to Elzie by phone about how women have been involved in the protests, and what that means for the movement.

Noah Berlatsky: Conversations around police brutality issues have centered mostly on incidents with black men or boys: Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice. Given that, what role do women have in the #BlackLivesMatter protests, or why are women important to the movement?

Netta Elzie: In the beginning, the first 21 days, when we were under militarized police occupation, I can say for sure it was way more women than men in those streets. So many black women put their bodies on the line for this cause, because we birthed the people that the police are killing. So not only are we out there for ourselves, but we're out there for our husbands, our boyfriends, our kids, our cousins, our nephews. Because we're the ones who keep birthing black people, basically.

So it is interesting to see the dynamics change when it was time to have meetings and private phone calls and the back door stuff. I'd go to these places and it would be predominantly male, predominantly heterosexual black men. There would be little representation of everyone else that was out there in the streets. It was overwhelming at first. People wanted to be able to say that I was there, but I would be silenced or people would speak for me instead of asking me. People would speak ahead. There would always be some man who would answer the question for me while I'm trying to talk.

Berlatsky: There was a lot of discussion about the moment when you and Erika Totten got on stage to speak at the Justice For All March in D.C. despite the fact that Al Sharpton's National Action Network didn't really seem to want you there. Is there a change in terms of the amount of women participating in these protests versus the civil-rights movement?

Elzie: Compared to the civil-rights movement, I think it's the same amount of women. It's just that in our case, we are fortunate enough to not be silenced. There are many wonderful black women who made the civil-rights movement move, but you don't know their stories. You have to go dig for them. You really have to do your research to find out who Ella Baker is.

But now ... I feel like this movement is so all-inclusive because blackness is all-inclusive. Blackness is not just black straight men. There are gay men in this work doing amazing work. There are queer folks. There are trans folks. There are gay and lesbian folks, bisexual, there are religious black people, There are atheist black people. I am not religious at all, and I'm still doing this work in the name of love and in the name of loving black people.