The term comes from Ta-Nehisi Coates' "Between the World and Me." He emphasized the use of the term Black bodies to draw attention to the abuses of the state and white supremacy against my people. Coates wrote:

"Here is what I would like for you to know: In America, it is traditional to destroy the black body – it is heritage. Enslavement was not merely the antiseptic borrowing of labour – it is not so easy to get a human being to commit their body against its own elemental interest. And so enslavement must be casual wrath and random manglings, the gashing of heads and brains blown out over the river as the body seeks to escape. It must be rape so regular as to be industrial. There is no uplifting way to say this. I have no praise anthems, nor old Negro spirituals. The spirit and the soul are the body and brain, which are destructible – that is precisely why they are so precious. And the soul did not escape. The spirit did not steal away on gospel wings. The soul was the body that fed the tobacco, and the spirit was the blood that watered the cotton, and these created the first fruits of the American garden. And these fruits were secured through the bashing of children with stovewood, through hot iron peeling skin away like husk from corn."

Slavery was brutality inflicted upon the human form of my ancestors. Lynching was torture stacked upon the bodies of my ancestors. By focusing on Black bodies, we bring into relief the physical toll white supremacy has on Black bodies.