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Trayvon Martin’s mother used the 10th anniversary of his death on Saturday to urge those who sought justice for her family to continue to fight.
Sybrina Fulton spoke to the National Action Network, the civil rights organization founded by the Rev Al Sharpton in Harlem. She said she had come to New York City from Florida in order to support her supporters.
“If you don’t do anything else, don’t give up,” she said.
Sharpton compared Martin’s legacy to that of Emmett Till, the Chicago teen whose lynching in Mississippi in 1955 stoked the civil rights movement.
Martin was 17 when on the night of February 26, 2012 he made his way back from a store to his father’s home in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, a suburb of Orlando.
George Zimmerman, a community neighborhood watch member, confronted and shot him, after reporting him to authorities as a suspicious person.
Zimmerman told authorities Martin attacked him. In 2013, he was acquitted of second-degree murder.
The shooting refocused attention on race and justice in the U.S., in the years leading up to the formation of the Black Lives Matter movement.
When Zimmerman was acquitted, Barack Obama, then president, said: “You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is: Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.
“And when you think about why, in the African American community at least, there’s a lot of pain around what happened here, I think it’s important to recognize that the African American community is looking at this issue through a set of experiences and a history that doesn’t go away.”
Obama said there were “very few African American men in this
Martin’s Death Anniversary Reopens Racial Wounds
country who haven’t had the experience of being followed when they were shopping in a department store; that includes me”.
Listing similar experiences, he said the way Black men were treated “inform[ed] how the African American community interprets what happened one night in Florida. And it’s inescapable for people to bring those experiences to bear.”
On Saturday, Fulton told the National Action Network: “I thank God for all the Trayvon Martins that you don’t know, all the young ladies who have been shot and killed and our Black and brown boys who have been shot and killed and you don’t know their names.
“Thank you for standing up for them. Thank you for praying for them. Thank you for supporting them. They need you. They need your voice. And if you don’t do anything else, don’t give up.”
The New York mayor, Eric Adams was a state senator at the time of Martin’s death. Later that year, he was among several Black lawmakers who wore hooded sweatshirts to a legislative session, as a way to call attention to Martin’s death while wearing such a garment.
On Saturday, Adams praised Fulton for “turning pain into purpose”.
