Afro-Brazilian activist and politician Marielle Franco assassinated 50 years after MLK, beloved leader was reportedly inspired by Ferguson unrest

Henrique Gomes Batista, a correspondent for the Brazilian newspaper O Globo, was in St. Louis last week, researching an article about the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.

Yet in his own country, thousands were taking to the streets to protest the suspected assassination of one of Brazil’s main black human-rights leaders, Marielle Franco, and a Rio de Janeiro councilwoman.

Franco, 38, was arguably as beloved in Brazil as Martin Luther King was in the United States.

“For Brazil, it’s a very very big issue,” Batista said.

Batista had contacted the St. Louis American to learn more about Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movement. Franco, herself, was a prominent critic of police killings in Rio’s shanty towns, or favelas.

On March 14, Franco and her driver Anderson Pedro Gomes were killed in Rio’s Estacio neighborhood when a car pulled up beside them and someone inside shot at them, CNN reported. A press secretary who worked for Franco was sitting the back seat and was injured.

Ten minutes before she was killed, Franco had been laughing with young black women leaders and strategizing on ways to get more women elected into office at an event called, “Black Women Moving Structures.”

Batista said Franco was inspired by Ferguson.

“This movement and other movements in Brazil is very inspired by Black Lives Matter,” Batista said. “Black Lives Matter is very famous in Brazil. The violence in Brazil against black people is so hard.”

In Brazil, racism is less apparent in some ways, Batista said. It’s more common to have interracial couples than in the United States, he said, but Brazil is more segregated.

“The poor people are black,” he said. “The worst opportunities are for blacks. The worst schools are in the black neighborhoods or in favelas.”

Unlike King, Franco was at the start of her career.

Franco was born in one of the poorest favelas in Brazil, Batista said, the Mare community complex, which is home to approximately 140,000 residents. At 18, she became a single mother, Batista said, but she still went onto college and earned a master’s degree in public administration.

When she was elected as council woman in 2016, she received the one of the highest vote count among council members in that election. A member of the Socialism and Liberty Party, Franco was in her first term in office. As a gay black woman, she was an ardent fighter for equal rights.

The day before she was murdered, Franco questioned the military’s policing tactics related to the death of a young man, in a post on her personal Twitter. “How many more will have to die for this war to end?” she wrote.

A few weeks ago, the federal government ordered that Brazil’s military would take over policing Rio’s streets to address the rise in violence. About 3,200 soldiers now patrol public streets in predominantly poor, working class neighborhoods, local news outlets reported.

Batista said Franco was against this move and she had just been appointed to a special commission to monitor the federal intervention.

“We must speak loudly so that everybody knows what is happening in Acari right now,” she wrote on Twitter. “The 41st Military Police Battalion of Rio de Janeiro is terrorizing and violating Acari residents. This week two youths were killed and tossed in a ditch. Today, the police walked the streets threatening residents. This has always happened and with the military intervention things have gotten worse.”