Transcript
Into America
Reconstructed: The Book of Trayvon
Archival Recording: Welcome to freedom, everybody. Hey. (CHEERING)
Archival Recording: It’s a legacy, right? It is a continuance. This is why it’s so important to understand our history.
Trymaine Lee: Freedom, for much of our history, has been a dream deferred for Black people in America. It’s been as much a condition and an ideal as some sort of distant promise land that was never actually promised.
Archival Recording: When you think about all the dreams and aspirations that people had and they lived, and then they are buried here.
Archival Recording: 502 acres of Black-owned land where we are going to build a city for us, by us.
Archival Recording: This is the richest place in all the earth.
Archival Recording: I felt like our ancestors called us to this land.
Lee: Freedom, in this country, has been the harvest of blood and labor and unbelievable sacrifices. Freedom was our ancestors’ wildest dreams, and they fought like hell to make those dreams come true.
Archival Recording: We’re now picking the fruit off of the tree, but the seed was planted with people like Robert Smalls that really did see violence.
Reverend C.t. Vivian: You can turn your back on me, but you cannot turn your back upon the idea of justice.
Malcolm X: We suffer political oppression, economic exploitation, and social degradation, all of ’em from the same enemy. The government has failed us. You can’t deny that.
Archival Recording: Black folks, we keep comin’.
Elizabeth Alston: So I’m just here to let you know that I stand for something.
Lee: But freedom was never free. It was paid for with a faith in things unseen.
Alston: Courage is not the strength to go on, but going on when you have no strength.
Barack Obama: Amazing grace. (APPLAUSE) How sweet the sound.
Adam Clayton Powell Jr.: Promises have been broken. I say to them, keep the faith, baby.
Crew: The flag that has been used as a symbol to brutalize.
Bree Newsome: You come against me with hatred and oppression and violence. I come against you in the name of God. This flag comes down today.
Voices: What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now.
Obama: May God continue to shed his grace on the United States of America. (APPLAUSE)
Lee: But this freedom, our freedom, has also been fleeting. It’s been fragile, and in constant need of defining and defending. The limits of our freedom are laid down in lines we can’t always see, and boundaries we can’t cross.
Sybrina Fulton: The lord is my shepherd. Proverbs, the third verse, the fifth and sixth chapter tells me trust the Lord with all your heart, and lean not into your own understanding. I stand before you today not knowing how I’m walking right now, because my heart hurts for my son.
Lee: Sometimes I wonder if we’re free at all. And if not, what happens to freedom deferred? Wow. But here we have Trayvon Martin’s gray hoodie, and it’s hard to even look at this with that bullet hole in his chest.
Spencer Crew: It is. It is–
Lee: And his sneakers, his white sneakers. The Arizona Iced Tea, the Skittles, his phone. Just a boy. He was slender. That’s a young man.
Crew: Seventeen years old. He’s a young man who was just doing the things that teenagers do. And for this, for an individual…
Lee: I’m standing in front of a display case at the National Museum of African American History and Culture with emeritus director Spencer Crew. And we’re looking at what Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black boy, was wearing the night he was cut down. His white and red Nikes, his cell phone, and a gray hooded sweatshirt with a bullet hole across the chest.
Crew: It’s just difficult to accept.
Lee: How is Trayvon Martin’s life and death, and that sweatshirt, which came to symbolize so much. It was a hoodie.
Crew: Absolutely.
Lee: The hoodie criminalized him, and his Black flesh criminalized him.
Crew: Right.
Lee: What role does this play in this exhibition?
Crew: Well, if we think about the whole idea of racial profiling, and the concept that African Americans are not expected to be in certain places at certain times, we really face this longer trajectory of how enslaved were seen with slave patrols.
What Trayvon Martin’s experience and his death illustrates is that, this sense that there are only certain places where people of color should be that are acceptable continues to be an important part of how our lives are defined today.
And here we had this young man who is in a neighborhood where his father lives, where he’s just going to the store to get some food, and this neighborhood patrol person decides that he shouldn’t be there. And I think it really fits in with this idea in Reconstruction that African Americans were only supposed to have a certain place in that society. When you go outside of that place, you need to be pulled back in or punished for having broken the rules.
Lee: This idea that Trayvon was killed for breaking some unspoken rule about where he could be or should be, even if that place was his father’s suburban Orlando neighborhood, is heartbreaking. As Spencer and I stand there, staring through the glass at Trayvon’s hoodie and at that hole where his heart would’ve been, I can’t help but wonder how these items got here, 1,000 miles from Miami, where he lived with his mother, Sybrina Fulton.
Sybrina Fulton: I was like, no, I can’t. I gotta hold on to ’em. They’re mine. I gotta keep ’em. I gotta preserve ’em. I gotta, you know, I don’t know what I was gonna do with the box.
Lee: For the better part of a decade, Trayvon’s clothing and personal items from that night were tucked away in a box marked as evidence and stowed away in Sybrina’s house. A physical reminder of the worst years of her life, the death of her youngest son, and then the grueling trial and federal investigation that cleared his killer of any legal wrongdoing.
Sybrina Fulton: They were all in a box and it was marked evidence, you know? Because after the trial they went to the DOJ, the Department of Justice, and then eventually it got into my hands. And so I was like, “Okay, I have to keep these things forever and ever and ever.” Well, how was I gonna do that? It was like a Pandora’s box. It was something that you shouldn’t open. It was something that you know you can’t play with.
Lee: It took three long years before Sybrina finally made peace with the idea of parting with her boy’s belongings.
Sybrina Fulton: His hoodie, his pants, his cell phone, the drink, the candy. Well, what am I gonna do with these things? You know, this is me talking to myself like, “Well, how can I keep these things forever? How can I preserve these things? How can I make sure that this is actually a parta history?”
I wanted everybody to see that. If you looked at the hoodie, you saw a hole in his chest, you know, where his heart was, where he was shot at. I want people to see that. I wanna remind people that this happened here in the United States. And so that’s why I decided to donate the things. Because I gave America Trayvon. Trayvon belongs to America.
Lee: Trayvon’s personal items are now part of the National Museum of African American History and Culture’s vast collection. And they’re on display in the museum’s exhibit on Reconstruction called Make Good the Promises. But more than that, those last material markers of this boy’s life are perhaps the most striking examples of Black America’s freedoms under fire.
In that bullet-scarred hoodie we see generations of Black people pushed sometimes violently into a sort of half Americanness, where the safety and sanctity of Black bodies so often hangs on the whims of white people who historically have been deputized to keep Black people in their place. But we also see (CHEERING) a symbol of resistance.
Voices: What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now. Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot. Don’t shoot…
Lee: I’m Trymaine Lee, and this is Into America. This February marks ten years since Trayvon Martin was shot and killed. So on this fourth and final episode of our Reconstructed series, we bring you The Book of Trayvon, how the teen’s death and the movement built in his memory echoes the century old fight to force America to make good on all its promises.
Kidada Williams: The through lines from Reconstruction to Trayvon Martin’s killing may not seem clear to a lotta people. But they’re absolutely connected.
Lee: Kidada Williams is a history professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. We spoke with her last week as well. Her research focuses on racist violence in the post-Civil War era.
Williams: So it’s all connected by a commitment to white supremacy. Wherever you see this violence, that ideology is at play. And it’s at play whether Black people are practicing their faith. It’s at play whether they are minding their business in the car or coming from a convenience store. It is that white supremacist belief that Black people do not have the right to be free, equal, and secure that informs the violence that they are experiencing, whether it comes from vigilantes or the state.
Lee: The white policing of Black bodies is older than America itself. Throughout enslavement, our freedom of movement was restricted by a system of slave passes and armed patrols. Any Black person moving around without direct white supervision had to carry a small piece of paper with their physical description, a reason for their trip, and the name of the white person who lay claim to them.
Congress passed its first Fugitive Slave Act in 1793, signed into law by George Washington. A second one was passed in 1850 as part of a compromise to keep the union together. The 1850 law required the federal government to actively assist in tracking down and apprehending people who had escaped slavery.
And even further, the act incentivized all white people to take part in policing Black bodies, threatening fines and imprisonment for anyone who didn’t assist in capturing supposed runaways. But armed with the new law, white kidnappers had a legal means to snatch and enslave free Black people too.
Williams: The realities of this system is an investment in controlling and policing and limiting Black people’s freedom no matter what. And you don’t do that just by the hands of the enslavers, or even today by the police. You incentivize the larger white population to play an active role in policing and subjugating Black people, and limiting their rights and limiting their freedom by also keeping them under surveillance, watching them, marking them as suspect.
Lee: With emancipation, the Fugitive Slave Act went away, but white attitudes didn’t. Our skin was used to mark us as separate.
Williams: The white response to emancipation was full of resistance, and that plays a significant role in not only the violence that we see in the South, but white northerners’ and westerners’ willingness and ability to look past this wave of killings that we see in the South. So there’s a lot of resistance to not only the abolition of slavery, but also what follows that. And that will be the recognition of African Americans’ right to have rights.
Lee: The violent white resistance to the so-called freedom that came with emancipation began right away.
Williams: There are instances where there are people who are trying to leave Alabama farms and plantations, and they are slaughtered, and their bodies are left on the road. And so other people who are coming through are talking about, “This is what I saw on the road,” and they’re seeing it’s all Black people.
Lee: Wow.
Williams: And it’s very clear that they are probably trying to escape the farms and plantations. So this is 1865, right? The war is over. The war is over. This is peacetime.
Lee: Wow.
Williams: And Black people have to run this gauntlet into freedom. So they have to get free, because the people who held them in bondage are resisting.
Lee: Kidada says this was the first era of backlash after the Civil War.
Williams: I like to call it everyday violence. And so this is the violence that people see when they are insisting on being paid for their labor, when parents refuse to put their children into apprenticeships. What’s happening is that the people who held them in bondage are striking back.
So they may assault them. They may try to kidnap their children, et cetera. And African Americans are fighting back. This is freedom now, right? They recognize that they don’t have to tolerate the kind of violence that they did when they were held in bondage. So it’s a lot of one-on-one exchanges, and Black people are fighting back.
Lee: But as Black folks fought back, white people changed tactics.
Williams: And so white supremacists recognized that, right? If they go to Black people one on one they might get beat. And so we start to see, especially after the 15th Amendment, with the enfranchisement of Black men, it starts to change and evolve into this very organized political project to deny Black people freedom.
And that’s when you start to see more people working in groups like the Ku Klux Klan or the Knights of the Camelia. They’re essentially carrying on and bringing forward an already existing project of resistance to emancipation. So a lotta people are getting in on this organized violence while having absolutely no real relationship with a group like the Ku Klux Klan. They just recognize that it’s a larger war on Black people’s freedom, and they want in on it.
Lee: Like so many people who carried out violence against Black people during reconstruction and in the decades after, Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman, didn’t belong to an organized vigilante hate group. So when Zimmerman decided that a teenage Black boy walking home in the rain with his hood on looked suspicious, and didn’t belong in his neighborhood, Kidada says he became part of this long history of policing the movements of Black people.
Williams: Trayvon was minding his business, being a free Black boy in America. And in that respect he has a lot in common with those African Americans during the Reconstruction era. They were minding their business. They were doing what they were supposed to do.
They weren’t harming or hurting anyone. And yet they became targeted by people who didn’t believe in Black people’s right to be free, equal, and secure. And after they were killed, you get the distortion of who they were and the history of what happened to them by the white power structure.
Lee: Trayvon Martin was killed while he was visiting his father in a gated community in Sanford, Florida, just outside of Orlando. One of the first places to rise up and protest his killing was the nearby majority Black neighborhood of Goldsboro.
Voices: I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin…
Lee: It makes sense that Goldsboro helped lead this movement. The community dates back to Reconstruction when the Freedmen’s Bureau helped settle Black folks there after the war. In 1891, it became the second all-Black town in Florida, after Eatonville.
And Goldsboro was booming, with its own post office, a thriving commercial strip, and workers with money to spend, employed with the railroads, local warehouses, and in agriculture. But within just 20 years, the town of Sanford annexed Goldsboro against its will, stripping Goldsboro of its independence and making it part of Sanford proper.
While Sanford is over half white today, Goldsboro remains predominantly Black. When Trayvon was killed, the community was already on edge. A few years earlier, two white security guards shot and killed a Black teenager, but the charges against them were dropped. And then George Zimmerman wasn’t initially arrested after shooting Trayvon Martin. So Goldsboro had had enough.
Voices: No justice. No peace. No justice. No peace. No justice. No peace.
Archival Recording: (UNINTEL) if it’d been a Black man shot a white man with a (UNINTEL).
Lee: On February 26th, 2012, Trayvon left his father’s townhouse during the halftime of the NBA All-Star Game, headed to the store to pick up some snacks for his younger brother. He never made it back home. The next morning, Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, filed a missing person’s report.
But the police told Tracy his son wasn’t missing. Trayvon had been shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a wannabe cop and self-appointed neighborhood watch captain. Zimmerman, who is a white Hispanic, argued that he shot Trayvon in self defense.
The police refused to arrest him. Zimmerman was the only one armed that night. Trayvon, dressed in that gray hoodie, only had a bag of Skittles and a can of Arizona Iced Tea. In those first days after the shooting, the story was only picked up by local media.
Back then I was a reporter at the Huffington Post. And after years as a police reporter in Philly, New Orleans, and New York, I’d covered dozens of stories about young men and boys who looked just like Trayvon. Black boys shot by police or by gangs or rivals.
But I knew from the start, this one was different. I got a call from a source I’d been talking with for a few months before the shooting. He gave me a quick rundown of what happened. And I’ll never forget when he said, “Trymaine, the boy only had some candy and a can of iced tea on him.”
And he said, “I have his father right here with me. Do you wanna talk with him?” What I heard in Tracy Martin’s voice as he talked about wanting his boy back and wanting answers was gut-wrenching. The first story I wrote about the case was published on March 8th.
And I quoted Tracy saying this: “I want answers, but I don’t have any to give. Not for his mother, his brothers, or his sisters. We don’t have nothing, but we want answers.” When I thought about Trayvon being so young and so fresh-faced, I couldn’t help but see myself at that age, or my brother or cousins or our friends.
We were young and Black and wore hoodies and headphones and baggy jeans. We tried to stay outta trouble, and sometimes trouble just found us. But we tried nonetheless. There was such a profound unfairness in Trayvon’s death, for him, his family, for all of us who grew up as Black boys in a country that sometimes hates us, but most of the time fears us if they see us at all.
And at 17, you can be painfully aware of that dynamic or oblivious to it. Oath can be dangerous. You’re so often policed by security guards or cops or mall clerks or even by loved ones who wanna give you talks about where you should go and where you shouldn’t, for your safety and their peace of mind. The more I reported on Trayvon’s story from Florida, the more calls I got to talk about the case on radio and TV.
Keith Olbermann: Senior reporter for the Huffington Post Trymaine Lee. Thank you for your time tonight, sir.
Lee: Thank you, Keith. It’s good to be here.
Olbermann: How is this man…
Lee: The first time I was ever on TV news to talk about my reporting was on a show called Countdown with Keith Olbermann on Current TV. I think, unfortunately, it might actually take a Trayvon Martin to save the next Trayvon Martin. But I think if there’s any good out of this at all in talking to folks, it’s that this Trayvon Martin issue and the community galvanizing around it is bringing attention to it. And I think no matter Black, white, whatever your class is, it’s hard not to be touched by this case.
Pressure began mounting for the police to release the 911 tapes. More than three weeks after the shooting, they finally did. The night the tapes were released, I sat listening to them in a rental car parked outside of a local municipal building.
George Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.
Archival Recording: Okay, and this guy, is he white, Black, or Hispanic?
Zimmerman: He looks Black.
Lee: This is just a snippet of the 911 call made by George Zimmerman.
Archival Recording: Which entrance is that that he’s heading towards?
Zimmerman: The back entrance. Fucking punks.
Archival Recording: Are you following him?
Zimmerman: Yeah.
Archival Recording: Okay, we don’t need you to do that.
Lee: There were several other 911 calls which we’re not gonna play here, calls from neighbors describing the altercation taking place between Trayvon and George Zimmerman. As I sat there listening, one took my breath away. You hear what sounds like a boy screaming. And then a single gunshot. From that moment on, there was no containing the story.
Archival Recording: This case drew national attention after 911 tapes were released from the night Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot and killed Martin, an unarmed teenager. Police say there is a one minute gap where they’re not sure what happened.
Lee: But while many in Black America saw a son, a brother, or themselves, some just saw a thug.
Archival Recording: The parents of slain, unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin are slamming police for leaking information that their son had been suspended from school after traces of marijuana were found in his backpack. Martin’s parents called the leak a smear campaign…
Lee: Then came arguments that race had nothing to do with this.
Archival Recording: The FBI also spoke to then-lead investigator Chris Serino with the Sanford Police Department. Serino described Zimmerman as having a little hero complex, but not as a racist. Serino told agents he thought Zimmerman pursued Martin based on his attire and not skin color.
Geraldo Rivera: I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.
Lee: And there was Geraldo Rivera’s infamous appearance on Fox News.
Rivera: People look at you and they, what do they think? What’s the instant identification? What’s the instant association? It’s those crime scene surveillance tapes. Every time you see someone stickin’ up a 7-11 the kid’s wearin’ a hoodie. Every time you see a mugging on a surveillance camera or they get the old lady in the alcove, it’s a kid wearin’ a hoodie.
Lee: Meanwhile, calls for Zimmerman’s arrest grew louder and a movement was born.
Voices: We are Trayvon. We are Trayvon. We are Trayvon…
Archival Recording: While the daily drumbeat of protest rages on, and the demand for justice for Trayvon Martin continues to spread like wildfire on social media, George Zimmerman supporters…
Voices: Trayvon. Justice for Trayvon. Justice for Trayvon. Justice for Trayvon…
Lee: Within a month of Trayvon’s death, organizers of the Million Hoodie March in New York City called for justice. And more protests across the country soon forward.
Archival Recording: Trymaine Lee, what’s the mood of the crowd tonight? Is there a real sense of something has to happen?
Lee: You can actually feel it under your feet. I talked to one young man earlier, and he said it reminded him of the Million Man March, the feeling of excitement, exuberance, the wave that you feel of energy coming across the crowd. It’s just amazing.
Voices: Say Trayvon. Trayvon. Trayvon. Trayvon. Trayvon…
Archival Recording: And I just want New York to know that we’re not gonna stop until we get justice for Trayvon. (CHEERING)
Archival Recording: I want you guys to stand up for justice and stand up for what’s right. Justice for Trayvon.
Lee: LeBron James and Dwyane Wade posted photos of themselves and the Miami Heat wearing black hoodies with the hashtag #wewantjustice.
Archival Recording: I’m thinking about him and understand he’s a big fan of us, and you know, it just touches you in some way. So our heart and our prayers go out to him and his, you know, to his family. And hopefully they can get through this and hopefully justice is served.
Lee: Then after growing pressure, President Barack Obama broke his silence on the case.
Obama: My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are gonna take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we’re gonna get to the bottom of exactly what happened.
Lee: Watching all of this unfold in real time was both awe-inspiring and tense. And if I’m being honest, I had absolutely no idea what was coming next or just how far or how long Trayvon Martin’s name would ring. You can hear me trying to work through all of this at the end of an interview with WNYC’s On the Media about a month after the shooting.
Brooke Gladstone: So what I wanna know is do you think your work will be done only when there’s a trial? Only when George Zimmerman is convicted? What do you want out of this now?
Lee: I would like to see this the beginning of a conversation, and for us to be able to take a real serious look at race in America, justice in America. How are these scales of justice tipped? And what is weighing them down one way or the other?
So at the end of this, I can’t say that I want one thing or the other, but I’m certainly interested in seeing where this goes. I wonder if this ultimately is this watershed moment that we all believe it will be, and how will all be changed? And I think we’re all gonna be a little different after this. Ten years later, in some ways we can say yes, we are different. But that change has come with a cost. That’s coming up after the break.
Archival Recording: Trayvon is the Emmett Till of our generation. The importance of this rally is that we go back and serve social justice in our communities in the name of Trayvon. This is the beginning of a movement, the civil rights movement of my generation. It’s no longer a Black or white issue. As the Trayvon mom said, this is a right or wrong issue.
Lee: When Mamie Till’s 14-year-old son was tortured, killed, and thrown in a river in Mississippi by a group of white men, she made a decision. Miss Till held his funeral with an opened casket so America could see what those white men did to her boy. And his name, Emmett Till, became a catalyst.
The modern Civil Rights Movement can be traced back to this moment of outrage and frustration, when people across the country rose up to march, petition, and push for freedom in the form of justice. And after Trayvon was killed, his family could’ve retreated and dealt with their loss in private. But in the footsteps of Mamie Till, they pushed their grief outward, into America, and that grief has helped fuel a movement for a decade.
Fulton: We can’t give up. We come too far to give up now. And so I want to say happy birthday (APPLAUSE) to Trayvon.
Lee: Every year around Trayvon’s birthday, Sybrina Fulton and the rest of the family hold the Peace Walk and Talk in Miami.
Fulton: My son is the voice, and sometimes the face for so many other Trayvon Martins that you don’t know.
Lee: This year the march and rally were on February 5th, what would’ve been Trayvon’s 27th birthday.
Voices: Still standing. Still standing. Still strong. Still strong. Still standing. Still standing. Still strong. Still strong. Still standing…
Lee: As I stood in the crowd, there was just so much passion and energy.
Voices: Whose streets? Our streets. Whose streets? Our streets. Whose streets? Our streets. Whose streets? Our streets…
Voices: I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin. I am Trayvon Martin…
Lee: That chant, “I am Trayvon Martin,” makes me think of all the people I’ve met over the years who saw themselves in Trayvon and felt called by his killing to do something. It’s not an exaggeration to say that an entire generation of activists joined the cause because of Trayvon. People like Bree Newsome, Charlene Carruthers, and Philip Agnew.
Agnew: Something about Trayvon, maybe because he looked so young, because he was so innocent. Maybe because his killer was a regular, everyday citizen that was able to go home that night.
Lee: Phil has founded two racial justice organizations, Dream Defenders, and years later, Black Men Build. We caught up at Trayvon’s birthday rally.
Agnew: Maybe because the internet was becoming a bigger things for us, all those things converged at one time, and I think he was the seed and the water for some people. People couldn’t turn back. People couldn’t un-feel that feeling you felt of helplessness. And then we took to the streets and the whole country was watching. And that’s something that you can’t just say, “Hey, I’m gonna just go back to work.”
Lee: Phil remembers the moment everything changed for him. A friend told him to listen to the 911 calls from the night Trayvon was killed.
Agnew: And that’s when I went online, listened to the tape, him screaming, and then people calling 911. You remember those tapes? And being like, “This is crazy.” And so I absolutely remember. And I remember my friend telling me, “Man, you all need to do something about this.” It transformed my life. Fourteen years ago I was in pharmaceutical sales. You know, I was in a corporate job–
Lee: Oh, so when Trayvon Martin was killed you were in pharmaceutical sales?
Agnew: I was in pharmaceutical sales, man. I was working a corporate job for four years. I was a business student at FAM. And watching Occupy, Hurricane Katrina, Troy Davis, even the Gulf oil spill started to make me feel like I was watching the whole world pass me by.
And Trayvon’s death, listening to that call, hearing his parents, seeing that video of George Zimmerman in the jail, talking to the police officers like he did nothing wrong. Man, that changed me and transformed me irreparably, right? I can’t go back to the life I lived before that. And I don’t remember much about that life.
Lee: Can you believe it’s been ten years?
Agnew: No, I can’t. I don’t, we were just talking, man. I don’t know what happened. You know, I was still old then, (LAUGH) compared to the young people. I was 27 then. To be 36 and look at the last ten years and see how much has not changed, how much has changed, the more gray, all of that, it blows my mind. But the fight continues.
Lee: So there’s people like Phil who define their lives in two parts: before Trayvon and after Trayvon. And now there’s a whole generation who grew up knowing Trayvon’s name. And so it’s been ten years since Trayvon Martin was killed. How old were you, and do you remember, like, when it happened?
Jaylen Ezekiel: I was in second grade. I remember I got in the car ’cause my mom came to pick me up, and she told me, ’cause I wanted to go play with my friend outside, and she told me to stay home. And I was like, “Why?” She was just really freaked out because of what happened just four hours down from where we lived and stuff, so.
Lee: Jaylen Ezekiel was at the event with the Tallahassee chapter of the Omega Lamplighters, a leadership and mentorship program for young Black men. It’s his third time coming to the rally, but this time there’s new weight. He’s now the same age Trayvon was when he was killed.
Ezekiel: It was kinda, I didn’t understand it at such a young age. But getting it now, I’m 17 now. So I’m walking around and I’m in a jacket right now. And he was shot because he was walking home in the neighborhood that he lived in. So growing up and understanding, like, okay, this is how they see us. This is how they walk around. I had to walk, if the white man is walking this carefully, walking a step carefully, I gotta walk five steps more, you know what I’m saying?
Lee: And so now that you’re 17, how have you grown, matured, evolved since, you know, Trayvon was killed? Do you think not just being more cautious, but do you think about the world in different ways since Trayvon was killed?
Ezekiel: Ever since Trayvon was killed. It was the first major killing that affected I think my generation, and it was kind of like, okay, we was looking at it back then and we was like, “Oh, we’re young,” and stuff like that. That was ten years ago.
And we’re the (UNINTEL) now. While yes, I’ve been thinking about graduating from high school and heading off to college, he was probably thinking the same thing too and never got to fulfill that dream. So I’m just going out there, I’m trying to make my mama proud, and make sure, like, having to calm her down every time I walk outta the house. I could be going down to my aunt’s house around the corner, and it’s like, she’s worried. Just because…
Lee: A decade ago, as the protests gathered steam and more people learned Trayvon’s story, you could see that this energy, this anger, this organized movement for change had power. Since I started covering Trayvon’s story, I’ve seen so much. So much that likely wouldn’t have happened without him. So many ways that Trayvon has shaped America.
Voices: From Brooklyn. From Brooklyn. Miami. Miami. Queens. Queens. Compton. Compton. New Orleans. New Orleans. This. This. Has to stop. Has to stop. Today. Today.
Lee: Those early protests led to the formation of racial justice organizations, like the Dream Defenders, that still exist today.
Voices: We who believe in power cannot rest until it’s won. The dream. We who believe in the dream cannot rest…
Lee: And in 2013, when a jury found George Zimmerman not guilty of second-degree murder after his lawyers argued he acted in self defense, Alicia Garza posted on social media, “Black lives matter,” a phrase that has defined the fight for racial justice.
Voices: Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter…
Lee: “Black lives matter” was the rallying cry during the 2014 uprisings in Ferguson, after a police officer shot and killed 18-year-old Michael Brown.
Voices: Mike Brown. Mike Brown. Mike Brown. Hands up. Don’t shoot.
Lee: And the movement grew stronger.
Voices: What do we want? Justice. When do we want it? Now. Black lives matter. Black lives matter…
Lee: We have continued to see mass protests after so many Black lives have been cut short.
Voices: New York. New York. City. City. Stands. Stands. Strong. Strong. Strong. Strong. Strong. Strong. Strong…
Lee: Like Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Sandra Bland.
Voices: Black lives matter. Black lives matter. Black lives matter…
Lee: We witnessed a culture shift from the streets to the biggest stages in the world, like Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the 2016 NFL season.
Colin kaepernick: I’ll continue to sit. I’m gonna continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed.
Lee: And in 2018, when Beyonce opened her unforgettable HBCU-style Coachella performance with the Black National Anthem.
Beyonce Knowles: Lift every voice and sing, till earth and heaven ring…Ring with the harmony of liberty
Lee: And in 2020, in the midst of a global pandemic, we saw the true legacy of Trayvon Martin, after Ahmaud Arbery was murdered as he went for a jog, and Breonna Taylor was gunned down in her own apartment.
Voices: Say her name. Breonna Taylor…
Lee: And the world watched as an officer knelt on George Floyd’s neck.
Voices: Say his name. George Floyd. Say his name. George Floyd. Say his name. George Floyd. Say his name…
Lee: There was a global movement in place, ready to spring to action and flood the streets.
Voices: (UNINTEL PHRASE) This is what democracy looks like. Hey hey, ho ho, these racist cops have got to go.
Lee: And when Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd’s murderers were convicted last year, activists said the juries wouldn’t have reached these conclusions without Trayvon. But despite the changes of the last decade, racism remains entrenched in America.
The cops who killed Breonna Taylor were never charged. And early this month, in the same city where George Floyd was killed, a Minneapolis SWAT officer shot Amir Locke just seconds after entering an apartment on a no-knock warrant. The officer who killed him has not been arrested. But if Trayvon has gotten us any closer to freedom, what’s been the cost?
Fulton: I wish we was here on a more celebratory occasion, but we gotta do what we gotta do. My son is in heaven. My son is resting in power. (APPLAUSE)
Tracy Martin: Without you guys, we wouldn’t be here. You guys are our strength. And so it takes, you know, a special group of people to deal with people that are grieving.
Lee: Trayvon’s father, Tracy Martin, spoke after Sybrina at their son’s birthday rally.
Martin: And everybody grieves different. But you guys never wavered. You guys said, “We’re not gonna let you guys down.” And by you not letting us down, we definitely won’t let you guys down. We love you.
Lee: A few days later, away from the crowds and the camera crews, I caught up with Tracy to talk about what these ten long years without Trayvon have been like.
Martin: I learned early, when you have those days where you don’t feel like getting up and getting on the move, you still gotta get up and get on the move, because, you know, you’ve taken that vow to keep your son’s name uplifted and to keep fighting for him. And so we all know that our culture isn’t, like, great about hearing about our young Black and brown boys going too soon. But that motivates me, man. That don’t stop me from saying my son’s name or sharing his love and light everywhere I go.
Lee: Becoming an advocate for parents, especially fathers, who’ve lost children to gun violence, has helped Tracy live with his grief. But turning his pain into action brings up a different kind of tension.
Martin: I say to myself that I’m giving to society, but do society really understand what I’ve given up? And so giving up a part of me just, you know, losing a child is just unimaginable, man. And so to me that was the ultimate sacrifice, man, that you could ever write as a father.
Because we, you know, we don’t look to bury our kids. We don’t look to eulogize them or try to define what they legacy is to be. During that process, man, it really tears you up. And you have to find that inner strength to build yourself back up.
Lee: In death, Trayvon has become a sort of patron saint for a new generation fighting for justice, another unwilling martyr whose name and face continues to charge a movement. Tracy knows a different Trayvon, a regular kid, his kid.
Martin: One of my fondest memories of his birthday, his first birthday, man. We used to live in this little duplex. And my neighbor across from him, I knew him just by passing. And so I invited my neighbor over to the party, just being, you know, good neighbors.
Trayvon was sitting on the table, (LAUGH) and when they, whenever Jackson, he talks to me about it all the time, man. So Trayvon was sitting on the table and we were ready to sing Happy Birthday, and Melvin went to light the candle. And Trayvon kinda, like, slapped the candle off the cake. (LAUGH)
I’ll never forget, Melvin had on a new shirt, man, and the candle and the cake went all over the shirt. (LAUGH) And I never told him that he was gonna be his best friend for life. And it’s funny, man, that was on his first birthday. Me and Melvin still remain friends now today.
Lee: There’s that one picture, I think that it’s probably one of the first pictures I saw of you and Trayvon, is you got him around his neck and you’re kissing him, you know what I’m saying? It was this beautiful moment of tenderness that we rarely see from not just Black fathers, but us as Black men. What’s the story behind that picture and that day? I never got that story.
Martin: We used to throw little Christmas parties and new year’s parties at my house. And I had some DJ equipment, and Trayvon used to always want to DJ for the party. So we let him play the music. That picture was taken on one of those holidays. And we were actually standing by the wall of my house, and I just kinda hugged him and gave him a kiss, like, “Yo, Dad loves you, man.”
And, you know, that was just, you know, they just so happened to catch that moment. But that wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime moment, man. Those moments are, like, all the time, you know? We have a tendency of thinking there’s something wrong with giving your son a kiss. But as a Black man, you know, there’s no other way. If you don’t show your son love, nobody else will.
Lee: This painful stereotype about Black fathers has haunted Tracy.
Martin: During the trial, there was one potential juror that mentioned that Trayvon would still be here had he had his father in his life. And the sad part about that is that’s a stereotype. That’s what some people feel about African American dads.
And, you know, that was my guy. We were very close. But just coming from a dad’s perspective, a Black father’s perspective, I think that we just don’t get enough recognition for the, you know, for the nurturing, for the love, for the caring that we’ve done for our children. And that’s society. But my family and everybody who I know certainly know what impact I made on Trayvon’s life, how much I was involved in his life, how much he was involved in my life.
Lee: Tracy also has a nine-year-old son, and he told me he sees Trayvon living on through him.
Martin: Man, Mr. Tyler is, (LAUGH) he’s engaged. He’s fully engulfed in the fight, man. That’s why I keep speaking about young people and their importance. He’s nine years old, and he can tell you Trayvon’s life story. I just looked at his phone this morning and he got a screen saver.
The screen saver is, you know, a picture of Trayvon. And I’m assuming he put it on there. The other day he had Tyreek Hill on there, and he changed it. And I asked him, I said, “Why’d you change the screen saver?” And he was just, like, “Yo, you know, this, Pops, this is my brother. You know, I love him. I just wanna, you know, look at him every day.”
The second most hardest conversation I’ve ever had to have was with him and explaining to him, you know, how his brother died, who killed him. And so having those conversations with him kinda sparked something in him. And the love that he had for his brother that he never met is unimaginable.
Lee: Tracy has been to the Smithsonian, looked at his son’s sweatshirt in the glass display case, and seen how Trayvon is now part of the legacy of Reconstruction. As Sybrina told us earlier, Trayvon belongs to America now. But every once in a while, Tracy gets a glimpse of the son that was just his.
Martin: I was in my garage, man, and I was putting up some Christmas lights and everything. And I ran across his backpack. And it still had, you know, some more of his clothes in there and things like that. And it’s funny, man, you know, that bag’s been zipped up for, you know, eight, nine, ten years, man. And you know, I opened the bag, and I, like, smelled one of his shirts. It was just like that scent, his scent is, like, still in there. And, you know, I zipped the bag back up, put it back. Man, and–
Lee: Wow.
Martin: –you know, it’s just, you know, it’s things like that, man, that just make you realize the magnitude of the love that you have for someone when they’re gone. Man, I don’t take life for granted no more, man. Every day I wake up, man, I think of him, man. There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think of him. Just being able to hold on to some of the things like his backpack and some of those things like that, it means a lot. It’s real special.
Lee: Over the past ten years, I wanna believe that the torch lit by the killing of Trayvon Martin has moved us closer to freedom. But let’s not forget the personal toll. Trayvon wasn’t just a news story or a moment in history. He was a son and a brother.
The price his family paid, the price that Black folks have always paid on this long march toward freedom has been heavy. And let’s be real, it’s gonna stay heavy. But if the past, our past, has taught us anything, it’s that baked into all of the struggles of yesterday through emancipation, Reconstruction, backlash and Jim Crow, is that we have the backbone and indomitable will to achieve the impossible.
We have fought our way closer to freedom in a country that never intended us to have it. From the birth of a Black nation and the emergence of our political power, to the seeding of our own freedom in promise lands we built with our own hands, to keeping the faith in the face of hate and violence, to rewriting and reframing and recasting how we remember boys like Trayvon, who fell to young but rose in ways we could’ve never imagined, we are a people time and again reconstructed by our unwavering faith and fight to claim the wholeness of America, and every single thing owed to us.
And we will continue to reconstruct ourselves, fortified by everything we have built and nurtured and given a country that has so often torn us down, held us back, and dimmed our light. If anything, our history should give us reason to hope. Because when the knee of white America is not on our necks, Black people can do amazing, beautiful things.
Archival Recording: The question now is do you mean to make good to us the promises in your constitution?
Lee: As our Reconstructed series comes to an end, please remember to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to share your thoughts and tell us what you’ve learned. Use the handle @IntoAmericaPod. And you can tweet me @TrymaineLee, or write other us at IntoAmerica@NBCUNI.com.
Into America is produced by Isabel Angell, Allison Bailey, Aaron Dalton, Max Jacobs, and Joshua Sirotiak. Original music is by Hannis Brown. Our executive producer is Aisha Turner. This episode was produced in collaboration with Stefanie Cargill, with recording help from Tom Craca, Felipe Leon, Jim Long, Jorge Pujol, Tom Staton, and Andy Scritchfield.
And an extra special thanks to the entire team at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture for their support on the series. I’m Trymaine Lee. Happy Black History Month, y’all. We’ll see you next Thursday.