A picture of 16 black female cadets raising their fists triumphantly went viral on social media after sparking an internal investigation at the United States Military Academy. West Point sought to determine whether these graduating cadets violated a defense department ban on "partisan" speech via a physical gesture with ties to black-power-era militancy and contemporary antiracist activism. The raised fist has experienced a renaissance of late, as black millennials politicized by the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, outraged by racist policing in Ferguson and Baltimore, and united in their deft use of social media have shown an increasing willingness to adopt both the shield of Martin Luther King Jr.’s disciplined nonviolence and the rhetorical sword of Malcolm X in a quest for social justice. Through its popularization of the raised fist as a symbol of generational insurgency, the Black Lives Matter movement has ensnared the West Point cadets.

May 18, 2016 ・ From Chronicle of Higher Education