3 Founders

Alicia Garza
Patrisse Cullors
Opal Tometi

Alicia Garza

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Garza
Sorority: Omega Phi Beta

Garza was born in Oakland, California, on January 4, 1981. She grew up as Alicia Schwartz in Marin County in a mixed-raced and mixed-religion household, with a Jewish stepfather and an African American mother.^[1] Garza identifies as Jewish.^[2] The family ran an antiques business, assisted later by her younger brother, Joey.^[1] In her teens, Alicia engaged in activism, promoting school sex education about birth control.^[3] Enrolling in the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), she continued her activism by joining the student association and calling for higher pay for the university's janitors. In her final year at college, she helped organize the first Women of Color Conference, a university-wide convocation held at UCSD in 2002.^[4] She graduated in 2002 with a degree in anthropology and sociology.^[5]

In 2003 she met Malachi Garza, 24, a transgender man and a community activist. In 2004, Alicia came out as queer to her family. In 2008, she married Malachi and took the name Garza, settling in Oakland.^[1]^[3]

Patrisse Cullors

Sorority: Omega Phi Beta

Cullors was born in Los Angeles, California. She grew up in Pacoima, a low-income neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley.^[1] She became an activist early in life, joining the Bus Riders Union as a teenager.^[1]

Cullors recalls being forced from her home at sixteen when she revealed her queer identity to her parents.^[2] She was involved with the Jehovah's Witnesses as a child, but later grew disillusioned with the church. She developed an interest in the Nigerian religious tradition of Ifá, incorporating its rituals into political protest events. She told an interviewer:

For me, seeking spirituality had a lot to do with trying to seek understanding about my conditions—how these conditions shape me in my everyday life and how I understand them as part of a larger fight, a fight for my life.^[3]

She later earned a degree in religion and philosophy from UCLA.^[1] She also received an MFA from USC.^[4]

Ifá

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If%C3%A1

Ifá is a Yoruba religion and system of divination. Its literary corpus is the Odu Ifá. Orunmila is identified as the Grand Priest, as he is who revealed divinity and prophecy to the world. Babalawos or Iyanifas use either the divining chain known as Opele, or the sacred palm or kola nuts called Ikin, on the wooden divination tray called Opon Ifá.

Ifá is practiced throughout the Americas, West Africa, and the Canary Islands, in the form of a complex religious system, and plays a critical role in the traditions of Santería, Candomblé, Palo, Umbanda, Vodou, and other Afro-American faiths, as well as in some traditional African religions.

Ewe Cannon

Among the Ewe people of southern Togo and southeast Ghana, Ifá is known as Afá, where the Vodun spirits come through and speak. In many of their Egbes, it is Alaundje who is honored as the first Bokono to have been taught how to divine the destiny of humans using the holy system of Afá. The Amengansi are the living oracles who are higher than a bokono. A priest who is not a bokono is known as Hounan, similar to Houngan, a male priest in Haitian Vodou, a derivative religion of Vodun, the religion of the Ewe.

DailyCollegian

https://www.collegian.psu.edu/news/campus/article_b4980612-d2db-11ea-95ff-c7b4bad4642f.html

Opal Tometi

Thta NU Xi
Sigma Phi Pi Cal Alpha Capta Alpha

Opal Tometi is the daughter of Nigerian immigrants. She is the oldest of three children and has two younger brothers. She grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from the University of Arizona^[10] and a Masters in Communication and Advocacy from Arizona State University. On May 7, 2016, she received an honorary doctor of science degree from Clarkson University.^[11] Tometi is a former Case Manager for survivors of domestic violence and still provides community education on the issue.

CNN Interview admitting she's a 'trained Marxist':
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/trained-marxist-black-lives-matter-co-founder-patrisse-cullors-goal-get-trump/