"On the evening of November 11, 2015, close to 200 students gathered at Baker Berry Library on the campus of Dartmouth College. Clad in black and holding homemade posters, they marched to the steps of the iconic Dartmouth Hall chanting, "We shall overcome" and "Black lives matter." One poster summed up the emotions of many students involved in the demonstration: "This is how we REALLY feel." The week before that march, a #BlackLivesMatter display in the campus student center had been defaced. The display featured 74 shirts representing 74 unarmed individuals killed by police officers in 2015. Twenty-eight of the shirts were black, representing black individuals who lost their lives. Soon after the display was presented, several of the black shirts were ripped down. The protesters also wanted to stand in solidarity with students of color at the University of Missouri and Yale University, where racially-charged incidents had sparked protests.

At Mizzou, a swastika drawn in feces was found in a dormitory bathroom, and reports of racial slurs and an overall climate of bias on campus had inspired a hunger strike by one student and broader demonstrations calling for the university's president and chancellor to step down. At Yale, allegations about a racist fraternity party and a dispute over a faculty member's push-back against university directives on Halloween costumes led to a March of Resilience with over a thousand participants"--.