By Melissa Bunni Elian

Afropunk X Ferguson is a portrait project that began in the summer of 2014, after the murder of black teenager Michael Brown by police officer Darren Wilson set off the Black Lives Matter movement. 

When his body was removed and carted off in the back of a SUV after four hours of laying in the street, it signalled a level of disrespect that was the final straw for young black people in Ferguson, Missouri and beyond, incensed over continuous deaths of black people at the hands of the state. 

AFROPUNK is a platform for trailblazing music and fashion, but also a movement unto itself. Afropunk X Ferguson is an ongoing opinion and portrait series that explores emerging political and social sentiments from attendees of AFROPUNK, the cultural foreground of the global African Diaspora.