NEW YORK (AP) — Trayvon Martin’s final night began with a convenience store run, a quick trip for candy and something to drink. It ended in a confrontation with a neighborhood watch volunteer, a shot fired, the 17-year-old dead on the street.
It might have been expected to end there — the violent deaths of Black teenagers have rarely drawn even fleeting attention.
But the killing of this baby-faced, hoodie-wearing, unarmed youth at the hands of a stranger still reverberates 10 years later — in protest, in partisanship, in racial reckoning and reactionary response, in social justice and social media.
“It was the thing that broke everybody, all at the same time,” said Nailah Summers-Polite, co-director of Dream Defenders, an organization founded in Florida during the protests following Martin’s death.
“We’re the Trayvon Martin generation, we are the people who were moved into action because of it.”
It happened on Feb. 26, 2012. Martin was visiting his father in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, a suburb of Orlando. Walking on the way back from the store, he was eyed by George Zimmerman, then 28, a member of the community’s neighborhood watch.
The initial police report said Zimmerman called authorities to report a suspicious person, a guy who, he said, “looks like he’s up to no good.” When Zimmerman said he was following the man, a dispatcher said, “We don’t need you to do that.” But armed with a gun, Zimmerman got out of his car.
In the confrontation that followed, Zimmerman would tell authorities, Martin attacked him, forcing him to use his gun to save himself. Zimmerman was allowed to go free.
From the start, Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin, were outraged. They questioned Zimmerman’s account. Had their son had been profiled as “suspicious” merely because he was Black? Zimmerman’s family was adamant that their son and brother, who identified as Hispanic, was not racist.
As media attention picked up in early March, others joined in, first locally and then far beyond.
For many Black people, the idea that Trayvon had been profiled because of his race hit a nerve, echoing their own experiences in all walks of life. In his death they saw their own vulnerabilities.
“It felt like, `Oh, wow, I can’t walk down the street, even in the realm of my everyday life, normal happenings, that could have easily been me,’” said Jonel Edwards, another co-director of Dream Defenders.
It was especially jarring in 2012, when the occupant of the White House was Barack Obama, the country’s first Black president. His election had some insisting that America had turned a real corner in its troubled racial story; even many skeptics thought there had been progress.
And yet, Martin was dead. The United States “had elected a Black president and had a Black attorney general, and they are still killing us and not even arresting the killer … we all saw our kids were still vulnerable,” said the Rev. Al Sharpton, who early on met with Martin’s family and their attorney Ben Crump as they worked to draw more attention to his death.
For years, police killings of Black people — like Amadou Diallo in 1999, Sean Bell in 2006 and Ramarley Graham, just weeks before Martin’s death — had caused outrage. But Zimmerman “was not law enforcement,” said Jenner Furst, co-director of the documentary, “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story.”
“This person did not have a badge,” he said. “This person had not been trained how to operate a firearm in the case of an emergency and not been trained in conflict management, had no skills for determining who is and who isn’t the risk.”
Said Sharpton: “I think the fact that it wasn’t a real police officer made it even more egregious” that authorities didn’t take action. “Here is a wanna-be security guard … There’s no reason for reluctance here.”
As word spread of Martin’s death, many looking to speak out turned to the digital space. Social media had already shown its potential as a platform for protest, and now the trend went into hyperdrive.
Kevin Cunningham, then a 31-year-old graduate of Howard University’s law school who was working as a social media consultant for a Muslim organization, had been intrigued by the power of social media since he saw the role it played in the 2011 Egyptian revolution. He posted a petition on Change.org calling for Zimmerman’s prosecution, and it soon had about 10,000 signatures.
That number increased exponentially when he turned the petition over to Martin’s parents, who made a personal plea for support for Zimmerman’s prosecution. Celebrities on social media encouraged people to sign. In the end, more than 2.2 million people signed on to the petition.
“It was the right place and time as far as that adoption of social media and just sort of the right egregious case that was able to touch people’s hearts,” Cunningham said.
While Zimmerman set up a site to seek donations to help his defense, his online detractors were many. Social media brought together multitudes for protests like the Million Hoodie March, as well as countless celebrities and everyday folk who posted images of themselves wearing hoodies with the hashtag, “I am Trayvon Martin.”
Among them: LeBron James, then playing with the Miami Heat, who posted an image of him and his teammates wearing hoodies, their heads bowed.
Obama himself was drawn into the furor, framing it in terms no other president could.
“I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids,” Obama said.
“If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.”
Six weeks after the shooting, Zimmerman was charged with second-degree murder; he would be acquitted the next year. But the ferment unleashed by Trayvon Martin’s death did not stop.
The verdict inspired a Facebook post written by Alicia Garza, a hashtag created by Patrisse Cullors and a social media strategy spearheaded by Ayo Tometi — and the result was Black Lives Matter, a movement to combat racism and racial violence against Black communities.
And many of the same demonstrators incensed by Martin’s killing took to the streets to protest the death of Michael Brown, 18 and unarmed, killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014, just weeks after Eric Garner, also unarmed, was killed by police in New York City.
“The moment of Trayvon Martin really opened our eyes,” said Edwards, of Dream Defenders, adding “there was much more of a general consciousness that had started in 2012 that then erupted in 2014.”
Then the 2020 death of George Floyd, killed by Minneapolis police, brought out a wide range of people around the country and the world.
“When the George Floyd tragedy happened, we all saw what played out with Trayvon,” film director Furst said. “And so many people said, never again, this cannot happen that way again.”
But that public anger also inspired a reaction. There have been those who took exception to Obama’s words of affinity to Martin, and saw the protests as anti-police chaos and disorder.
Others acknowledge that Martin’s death and its aftermath changed the country, but question whether the change was even remotely sufficient.
Sharpton, while disappointed that there has not been more federal legislation put into place, said a “cultural change” has happened.
He pointed to the case of Ahmaud Arbery, the 25-year-old Black man chased and killed in 2020 by three white men who saw him running in their Georgia neighborhood. The shooter in that case also claimed self-defense, but an almost entirely white jury found them all guilty.
“I think Trayvon shifted the culture where people started looking at things a little differently and nothing to me personifies that more than Arbery,” Sharpton said. “These two young men, I think, are the two pillars where we are on race.”
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Hajela is a member of the AP’s team covering race and ethnicity. She’s on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dhajela.
‘Stand your ground’ laws proliferate after Trayvon spotlight
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) — The “stand your ground” self-defense law had been in effect in Florida for more than six years when it became part of the national vocabulary with the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. When the 17-year-old was fatally shot, Florida was still one of the few states with the law that removes the duty to retreat before using deadly force in the face of danger.
Now, upward of 30 states have some form of the law and recent research indicates they are associated with more deaths — as many as 700 additional firearm killings each year, according to a study published this week in the journal JAMA Network Open.
The study found that stand your ground laws in those states could be associated with a national increase of up to 11% in homicide rates per month between 1999 and 2017. The largest increases, between 16% and 33%, were in Southern states including Alabama, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana, the study found.
“These findings suggest that adoption of (‘stand your ground’) laws across the U.S. was associated with increases in violent deaths, deaths that could potentially have been avoided,” the study’s authors concluded.
Advocates for the laws, especially the National Rifle Association, have argued they act as a crime deterrent by ensuring a person can protect themselves and others against a would-be assailant.
Florida was first in the nation in 2005 to adopt such a law. It was in force when Martin was fatally shot by self-appointed neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012. Martin was Black; Zimmerman had a white father and Hispanic mother.
The initial police report said Zimmerman called authorities to report a suspicious person, a guy who, he said, “looks like he’s up to no good.” He followed Martin despite instructions not to do so. In the confrontation that followed, Zimmerman would tell authorities, Martin attacked him, forcing him to use his gun to save himself. Zimmerman was allowed to go free.
Martin’s parents questioned Zimmerman’s version of events and eventually the news media and others picked up on the case. Zimmerman was arrested six weeks later after then-Florida Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor to the case.
Zimmerman’s lawyers opted not to pursue a “stand your ground” claim before trial, which could have resulted in dismissal of murder charges against him and immunity from prosecution. But the law was essentially used as his self-defense argument during the trial, which resulted in his acquittal.
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who was involved in the Martin case, called the Florida law “a virtual get-out-of-jail-free card that is essentially a license to kill.”
Today the battle rages. Gun-rights supporters argue people should not have to try to retreat before defending themselves, said Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. He pointed to a Florida homeowner who recently shot and killed a man suspected of shooting a police officer as the man tried to break into his house. While that case could have been covered by other self-defense laws, Gottlieb said “stand your ground” laws offer reassurance.
“It’s made a very big difference in self-defense situations,” he said.
Three new states passed laws last year removing the duty to retreat: Ohio, Arkansas and North Dakota, where its sponsor said the legislation “ensures someone will not have to run away prior to protecting themselves or their family.”
Six more loosened requirements to carry guns in public by removing the requirement to get a permit, the largest number of any single year. More than 20 states now allow permitless carry.
The U.S. Supreme Court also is expected to issue a ruling this session on whether New York’s restrictive gun permitting law violates the Second Amendment right to “keep and bear arms.” The law’s defenders have said striking it down would lead to more guns on the streets of cities including New York and Los Angeles.
Gun control activists say the increasing presence of guns and laws like “stand your ground” are a deadly combination.
“Laws like ‘stand your ground,’ or shoot first laws, give people like Jordan’s killer, my son’s killer, the idea that you can shoot first and ask questions later,” said Rep. Lucy McBath, who entered politics after her son Jordan Davis was slain at a Florida gas station in 2012 by a white man who was angry over the loud music the Black teenager and his friends had been playing in their car. Michael Dunn used the “stand your ground” law in his defense, but was convicted and is serving a life sentence.
Likewise, Rovina Billingslea’s family has never been the same. Her cousin Jasmine McAfee, a mother of two, was killed at the hands of an intimate partner near Orlando about four years ago. The shooter was later acquitted under “stand your ground” law, leaving her family reeling.
“There was no justice, no closure, just pain,” Billingslea said.
There are new efforts to push back against the measures against a backdrop of rising gun violence: Lawmakers from 19 states have signed on to a new task force aimed at amending or repealing the laws, especially in Georgia, Kansas and Pennsylvania, as well as Florida. The push is backed by Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action, whose founder Shannon Watts said they should be called “shoot first laws” since they differ significantly from other self-defense laws already on the books.
Since the Martin slaying, Florida has amended its “stand your ground” law to shift the burden of proof from the person claiming self-defense to the prosecutor handling the case.
Prosecutors and many police organizations have opposed the laws, contending they can protect criminals and hinder the ability to bring justice to fatal shootings.
“’Stand your ground’ laws provide safe harbors for criminals and prevent prosecutors from bringing cases against those who claim self-defense after unnecessarily killing or injuring others,” said David LaBahn, president and CEO of the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, in testimony to Congress.
In Florida, an ongoing trial in which a retired police captain is accused of murder in the 2014 shooting of a man inside a movie theater hinged initially on a “stand your ground” claim. A judge denied that claim for the former captain, Curtis Reeves, and that was upheld on appeal.
Reeves, however, is still claiming self-defense in the killing of Chad Oulson following a dispute over Oulson’s use of a cellphone during movie previews. The shooting happened after Oulson tossed a bag of popcorn at Reeves.
So far, that has not qualified as a “stand your ground” defense.
“The evidence will show that’s no reason to kill another person,” said Assistant State Attorney Scott Rosenwasser in an opening statement this week. “This was an intentional and purposeful shooting.”
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Whitehurst reported from Salt Lake City.
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This story corrects the name of the journal. It is JAMA Network Open, not the Journal of the American Medical Association.