WASHINGTON • Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors said she’s being targeted by the government for her “long legacy” of activism, her first public remarks since the charity voluntarily shut down its ability to raise funds amid legal threats from blue states.

Cullors, who resigned from her post as BLM’s executive director in May, said it was “deeply concerning” that people don’t have blind faith in BLM’s stewardship of its $60 million charitable bankroll and suggested that her critics in black media aren’t “actually black.”

“It’s this idea that I’m sneaky or I’m doing something nefarious, and that’s incredibly anti-black and sexist,” Cullors said during an interview Wednesday with Morehouse College.

“We have to call it what it is.”

Cullors alleged that she and other leaders in the charity sustained “collective trauma” last April after the New York Post revealed that Cullors had purchased four homes across the country for $3.4 million during her time at the helm of the organization, saying she felt betrayed that black reporters covered the controversy.

“What’s so effective about the right-wing media disinformation and misinformation strategy is that they deploy it inside the black community,” she said.

“To see them post about me, and then the Black media — I put in quotes, not all black media is actually Black — spread those rumors … I was naive to think black journalists and black media would be interested in talking to me first versus spreading misinformation and disinformation.”

Cullors added: “Black people really need to show up for the moment and understand what’s happening right now and how the right-wing media is taking any opportunity to undermine all the work that’s happened for the last decade.”

Cullors argued the newfound scrutiny over the organization is unfair targeting due to her history as an activist.

“I’m being targeted because I’m part of a long legacy of civil rights workers and human rights leaders who have effectively fought and won the U.S. government, both at the local level, statewide, nationally,” Cullors said, adding that she has “never done anything illegal.”

Cullors said she was shocked that her decision to publish BLM’s “Impact Report” in February 2021, which claimed the group ended 2020 with $60 million in the bank, only led to more criticism of her group’s finances.

“It backfired because of anti-black racism,” she said.

“We had a whole impact report where we showed where all the money went, and the question still is where did the money go.

That’s deeply concerning to me because it means people don’t want to believe what’s actually true.”

However, Cullors also acknowledged that BLM hasn’t done a good enough job disclosing what it has done with the $90 million the charity claimed to raise in 2020.

Cullors said it was “very scary” to have responsibility for such a huge sum of money and recalled feeling nervous because BLM was “going to have to explain” to supporters what it was going to do with the money.

Demonstrators gather in June 2020 in Compton, Calif., during a protest over the death of George Floyd who died May 25 after he was restrained by Minneapolis police.

the associated press file