No justice, no peace
slogan used as early as 1986, following the murder of Michael Griffith at the hands of mob of white youths
"No justice, no peace" is a political slogan which originated during protests against acts of ethnic violence against African Americans. Its precise meaning is contested. The slogan was used as early as 1986, following the killing of Michael Griffith by a mob of youths.
History
Linguist Ben Zimmer writes that use of the slogan "No justice, no peace" during protests goes back as far as the 1986 killing of Michael Griffith. Griffith, a Trinidadian immigrant, and three friends, all black, were assaulted by a mob of white youths in the Howard Beach, Queens, New York City. Griffith fled the attackers onto a nearby highway, where he was fatally struck by a passing car. In 2014, civil-rights activist Al Sharpton recounted: "In the midst of the protest, someone yelled the slogan, 'No justice, no peace'. Others began doing the same, and from then on I adopted it as a rallying cry each and every time a grave miscarriage of justice has befallen the disenfranchised."
Other sources suggest that the phrase was actually popularized by activist Robert "Sonny" Carson, who is quoted on February 12, 1987 as stating, "'No justice! No peace!' [...] 'No peace for all of you who dare kill our children if they come into your neighborhood...We are going to make one long, hot summer out here...get ready for a new black in this city!," while the New York Times reported on July 6, 1987: "'No justice, no peace,' said Mr. Carson repeatedly in what he said he hopes will emerge as the rallying cry for his cause." Carson appears to have used the phrase conditionally (see § Conditional or conjunctive, below).
The public source identifies “No justice, no peace” as slogan used as early as 1986, following the murder of Michael Griffith at the hands of mob of white youths. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around justice, peace and slogan.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q96066037. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1986, 2014 and 1987.
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This entry incorporates text from “No justice, no peace” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.