Tarana Burke started the Me Too movement in 2006, long before the Twitter hashtag.
The Bronx native began her career advocating for survivors of sexual assault in the 1990s in Alabama and New York. She would later create a Myspace page titled “Me Too,” which has now become full-fledged organization.
“I actually had the idea of empowerment through empathy before the words ‘me too,’ because I thought about how powerful it feels to not be alone,” Burke told USA Today in August. “How empowering it is to know you don’t have to walk a journey by yourself, to know that you’re not the only one. And how inherently powerful it is to do things collectively.
“And that was the building block for Me Too.”
Since then the phrase “Me Too” has become popularized after a series of sexual assault and rape allegations piled up against disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein starting in 2017.
Alyssa Milano, who was credited in many early media stories for starting the hashtag #MeToo, later acknowledged Burke’s work.
“#MeToo is historic and I wouldn’t be here without it,” Burke told USA Today. “We wouldn’t be talking about sexual violence, we wouldn’t have a sustained conversation. But I believe in vision, and movements are carried by vision.
“If we have a limited vision that the hashtag gives us, then we won’t ever make the kind of progress that’s necessary to actually look like we might end sexual violence.”
— J. Edward Morenophoto: Getty Images