Opal Tometi, co-founder of #blacklivesmatter, speaks to a packed house Wednesday night at the Lied Center, 1600 Stewart Drive.

Speaking Wednesday under a projected quote from Martin Luther King Jr., one of three founders of the national Black Lives Matter movement issued a call to action to the crowd filling Kansas University’s Lied Center.

“You have the choice of doing the work or not,” Opal Tometi said. “You don’t get to be neutral.”

The message was directed at all in attendance as Tometi pleaded with white students at the lecture to set aside privilege and hesitation and become allies of the movement. Black Lives Matter was a love note to African-Americans and an invitation to others, she said.

“What we need is courageous people to become engaged,” she said. “Embrace your discomfort and grow the movement.”

The plea was reinforced with the quote from the slain civil rights leader: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

Already an activist, Tometi recalled the event that prompted the creation of Black Lives Matter: the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.

“It was absolutely historic,” she said. “So many of us felt like we were collectively punched in the gut. It was as if we had to do something about it. We couldn’t let our generation be known for that story.”

Ironically, she learned of the verdict when checking her cellphone after watching a movie on the shooting death of an unarmed Oscar Grant by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer, Tometi said. She immediately started engaging other activists on social media, which soon led to the creation of the Twitter hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, she said.

The movement’s “second founding” was the protests in Ferguson, Mo., that followed the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer, Tometi said.

Since then, others have reworded the slogan, with “all lives matter” being the most popular alternative, Tometi explained.

“Trust me, I believe all lives matter,” she said. “I wouldn’t be doing this work if I didn’t believe that.”

That view was revealed in the Black Lives Matter principles Tometi shared with the audience. Those principles deplore racism, sexism and ageism and repeatedly call for LGBT inclusion in the movement and society.

Nonetheless, Tometi said, she remained committed to the slogan’s original wording.

“The fact is all lives don’t matter in the racist caste system of the U.S.,” she said. “Black lives don’t matter.”

Evidence of that could be found nationwide through such examples as the high incarceration and unemployment rates among black Americans, poorly funded schools in black communities and neglected neighborhoods, Tometi said. It was a theme she returned to when asked at the conclusion of her speech about so-called black-on-black violence. It was something that concerned and engaged Black Lives Matter, she said, but noted it was often a topic used to deflect the focus from state violence toward the black community. Noting there was more white-on-white violence in the United States, she suggested the alternative phrase “inter-communal violence,” and placed its presence in black communities in context.

“Inter-communal violence is present because of state violence,” she said. “That looks like dilapidated communities, underfunded schools and the rampant stop-and-frisk of young black men.”