"If Black lives matter, they have to matter all the time."
Those who use the term say it is an important point in describing the disproportionate amount of crime perpetrated by Black people against other Black people.
The earliest modern references to Black-on-Black crime came from Black media. In 1979, Ebony magazine, the first commercially successful Black-owned magazine focusing on the African American community, featured an article about Black-on-Black crime.
"Although the Black community is not responsible for the external conditions that systematically create breeding grounds for crime, the community has the responsibility of doing what it can to attack the problem from within," the article from the August 1979 issue read.
Black Enterprise magazine, a Black-owned publication focusing on Black business and economics, also referenced Black-on-Black crime in its June 1979 issue. "You might not know it from reading the daily newspaper or watching the evening news on television, but most big-city crime is committed by blacks upon blacks," an article in the issue stated.