Brittany N. Packnett Cunningham (born November 12, 1984) is an American activist and the co-founder of

Campaign Zero Campaign Zero is an American police reform campaign launched on August 21, 2015. The plan consists of ten proposals, all of which are aimed at reducing police violence. The campaign's planning team includes Brittany Packnett, Samuel Sinyangwe, D ...

. She was a member of President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

Task Force on 21st Century Policing The President's Task Force on 21st Century Policing was created by an executive order signed by United States President Barack Obama on December 18, 2014. Obama created it in response to the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri following the shooting of ...

. She was previously executive director for Teach for America in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

Missouri Missouri is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee): Iowa to the north, Illinois, Kentucky and Tennessee to the east, Arkansas t ...

Early life and education

Packnett Cunningham was born on November 12, 1984, to Rev Ronald Broadnox Packnett and his wife, Gwendolyn. She is the daughter of an ordained

Baptist Baptists form a major branch of Protestantism distinguished by baptizing professing Christian believers only ( believer's baptism), and doing so by complete immersion. Baptist churches also generally subscribe to the doctrines of soul c ...

minister in St. Louis. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in secondary education from

American University The American University (AU or American) is a private federally chartered research university in Washington, D.C. Its main campus spans 90 acres (36 ha) on Ward Circle, mostly in the Spring Valley neighborhood of Northwest D.C. AU was cha ...

. Favorable media reports have characterized her as being "

woke ''Woke'' ( ) is an adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English (AAVE) meaning "alert to racial prejudice and discrimination". Beginning in the 2010s, it came to encompass a broader awareness of social inequalities such as sexi ...

Career

In 2014, while Packnett was the executive director of Teach for America in St. Louis, she became involved in the protests that erupted after a police officer shot and killed an 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown, in Ferguson, Missouri. She used

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

and other social media to fight back against the distorted narrative the media was painting surrounding the protests. Packnett became a significant figure of

Black Twitter Black Twitter is an internet community largely consisting of African-American users on the social network Twitter focused on issues of interest to the black community in the United States.André Brock"From the Blackhand Side: Twitter as a Cultur ...

, where she spoke out about education, voting rights, and equal pay. ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

'' described Packnett as "heavily involved in the planning and coordination of the Ferguson protest," and

Governor

Jay Nixon Jeremiah Wilson "Jay" Nixon (born February 13, 1956) is an American lawyer and politician who served as the 55th Governor of Missouri from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected to the governorship in 2008 and reel ...

appointed her to serve on the Ferguson Commission established to respond to the unrest. In the summer of 2015, MAYANN cofounded

, a policy platform designed to end police violence. That same year she was appointed to Barack Obama's Task Force on 21st Century Policing, which emerged at the height of the police violence crisis. ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...

'' magazine named Packnett to a 2015 list of "12 New Faces of Black Leadership." She was also named to ''

The Root "The Root" is a song by American recording artist D'Angelo. It is the eighth track on his second studio album, ''Voodoo'', which was released on January 25, 2000, by Virgin Records. "The Root" was recorded and produced by D'Angelo at New York's ...

'' magazine's 2015 Root 100 list, wherein she was described as "the bridge over turbulent, troubled waters." ''

Ebony Ebony is a dense black/brown hardwood, coming from several species in the genus '' Diospyros'', which also contains the persimmons. Unlike most woods, ebony is dense enough to sink in water. It is finely textured and has a mirror finish when ...

'' cited Packnett with

Johnetta Elzie Johnetta "Netta" Elzie (born April 16, 1989) is an American civil rights activist. She is one of the leaders in the activist group We The Protesters and co-edits the Ferguson protest newsletter ''This Is the Movement'' with fellow activist De ...

Deray Mckesson DeRay Mckesson (born July 9, 1985) is an American civil rights activist, podcaster, and former school administrator. An early supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement, he has been active in the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore ...

, and

Samuel Sinyangwe Samuel Sinyangwe (born May 12, 1990) is an American policy analyst and racial justice activist. Sinyangwe is a member of the Movement for Black Lives, the founder of Mapping Police Violence, a database of police killings in the United States and ...

to its 2015 Power 100 list for their work on Campaign Zero. In 2016, she was promoted to Vice President of National Community Alliances at Teach for America and began the organization's first civil rights and equality campaign. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Packnett endorsed

Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton ( Rodham; born October 26, 1947) is an American politician, diplomat, and former lawyer who served as the 67th United States Secretary of State for President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013, as a United States sen ...

for president, stating: "This is not about me. This is about the work. The best way I can use my platform is to support Secretary Clinton." In a 2017

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

interview, Packnett encouraged

white people White is a racialized classification of people and a skin color specifier, generally used for people of European origin, although the definition can vary depending on context, nationality, and point of view. Description of populations as ...

to use the essay White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by

Peggy McIntosh } Peggy McIntosh (born November 7, 1934) is an American feminist, anti-racism activist, scholar, speaker, and Senior Research Scientist of the Wellesley Centers for Women. She is the founder of the National SEED Project on Inclusive Curriculum (Se ...

as a tool for recognizing and combating their

white privilege White privilege, or white skin privilege, is the societal privilege that benefits white people over non-white people in some societies, particularly if they are otherwise under the same social, political, or economic circumstances. With root ...

. During a May 2020 interview on

MSNBC MSNBC (originally the Microsoft National Broadcasting Company) is an American news-based pay television cable channel. It is owned by NBCUniversala subsidiary of Comcast. Headquartered in New York City, it provides news coverage and political ...

about the

murder of Ahmaud Arbery On February 23, 2020, Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old black man, was murdered during a racially motivated hate crime while jogging in Satilla Shores, a neighborhood near Brunswick in Glynn County, Georgia.

, Packnett Cunningham said, "America needs to ask itself why only a viral consumption of black suffering can actually bring action." During a Feb 2022 interview on

about new self-defense legislation proposed in her home state of Missouri, Packnett Cunningham said, "When folks talk about making America great again...They want to return to days when you could

lynch Lynch may refer to: Places Australia * Lynch Island, South Orkney Islands, Antarctica * Lynch Point, Marie Byrd Land, Antarctica * Lynch's Crater, Queensland, Australia England * River Lynch, Hertfordshire * The Lynch, an island in the Rive ...

or murder Black folks and there would be absolutely no retribution for it. That’s not hyperbole."

Personal life

In 2019, Brittany Packnett married fellow activist Reginald Cunningham in

New Orleans New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans

. The couple met in 2014 at a protest in their hometown of

. The couple was married at artist Brandan "Bmike" Odums' gallery, Studio BE, while standing between room-length portraits of

Coretta Scott King Coretta Scott King ( Scott; April 27, 1927 – January 30, 2006) was an American author, activist, and civil rights leader who was married to Martin Luther King Jr. from 1953 until his death. As an advocate for African-American equality, she ...

and

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

Stories of her

ancestors An ancestor, also known as a forefather, fore-elder or a forebear, is a parent or ( recursively) the parent of an antecedent (i.e., a grandparent, great-grandparent, great-great-grandparent and so forth). ''Ancestor'' is "any person from w ...

were uncovered in an episode of PBS' ''

Finding Your Roots ''Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'' is a documentary television series hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. that premiered on March 25, 2012, on PBS. In each episode, celebrities are presented with a "book of life" that is compiled wi ...

'', including the identity of her paternal grandfather, previously unknown to her.

References

External links

brittanypacknett.com
official website Appearance on Finding Your Roots January 11, 2022 * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Packnettcunningham, Brittany 1984 births Living people Activists for African-American civil rights Black Lives Matter people Teach For America alumni Washington University in St. Louis alumni American University alumni MSNBC people Activists from St. Louis