Trayvon's killing and
Florida's tragic past
updated 4:21 PM EDT, Mon March 26, 2012
Editor's note: Pulitzer Prize winner Isabel Wilkerson is the author of "The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration." One of the migrants documented in the book, George Swanson Starling, fled Florida for New York in 1945 after a standoff in the citrus groves, where he sought fairer wages for black pickers from the grove owners for whom they worked. The standoff -- in Sanford, Florida -- set in motion a plan to lynch him.
(CNN) -- Isolated in the moment, the shooting death of Trayvon Martin may seem a singular tragedy: a teenager mistaken for a criminal by an overzealous neighborhood watchman armed with a gun and backed by a state law that gives greater latitude to people to defend themselves when they feel threatened.
But that moment in February in the central Florida town of Sanford was steeped in a history that has haunted the state, the South and the country for generations.
No matter the state, the circumstances are eerily familiar: a slaying. Minimal police investigation. A suspect known to authorities. No arrest. Protests and outrage in a racially charged atmosphere. Florida is known for its amusement parks, beaches and pensioners from the North. But history bears out that Florida has been as much a part of the South and its vigilante-enforced racial caste system as Georgia and Alabama.
In 1920, a white mob burned down the black section of Ocoee, Florida, 30 miles west of Sanford, when two "colored" men tried to vote. The two black men were killed for having gone to the polls.
Isabel WilkersonThe black people who survived the massacre fled. The town remained all-white for generations. Three years later, a white mob burned and leveled the town of Rosewood, a black settlement by the Gulf of Mexico, 140 miles west of Sanford, after a white woman said a "colored" man had attacked her. It was where, a survivor said, "anything that was black or looked black was killed."
It was in 1934 that perhaps the single worst act of torture and execution in 20th-century America happened. In the Florida Panhandle town of Marianna, a farm settlement between Pensacola and Tallahassee, a 23-year-old black field hand named Claude Neal was accused of the rape and murder of a 20-year-old white woman. He was arrested and signed a written confession that some historians have since called into question.
A mob of more than 300 men armed with guns, torches and dynamite went searching for Neal in every jail in a 75-mile radius. The manhunt forced authorities to move Neal across the Panhandle -- by car and by boat, with the mob on their trail at every turn -- before they took him out of the state altogether, to the tiny town of Brewton, Alabama.
Someone leaked Neal's whereabouts, and a lynching party stormed the jail and took Neal, his wrists hogtied, back to Marianna. It went over the news wires that he would be lynched the following day.
Thousands gathered to see the lynching, so many people that the lynching party, fearing a riot, decided to take him to the woods. There they castrated him and tortured him for hours with such cruelty that one of the lynchers was reported to have thrown up. Neal's body was dragged through town and hanged from an oak tree on the courthouse lawn, his fingers displayed as souvenirs. No one was ever charged or spent a day in jail for Neal's murder.
In 1951, the first casualties of the modern civil rights movement, Harry T. Moore, and his wife, Harriette, were fatally wounded in Mims, Florida, 30 miles east of Sanford, when a bomb exploded under their bed on Christmas Day. Moore had been the lone representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Florida, crisscrossing the state to get equal wages for black teachers and the right to vote for blacks, who were denied that right in Florida and the rest of the South.
In more recent times, the first major race riots in the post-civil rights era erupted in Miami over a series of shootings of black men at the hands of white police officers who were all acquitted in the slayings.
In 1979, Arthur McDuffie, a black Marine Corps veteran and insurance salesman, was killed after a high-speed chase. The police said he had died from the crash of his motorcycle. But the coroner discovered multiple blunt-force wounds inconsistent with a crash. A police investigation found that the officers had pulled McDuffie from the bike, handcuffed him and took turns beating him with nightsticks and flashlights until he was motionless. The officers then gouged the road with tire tracks and drove over the motorcycle so that there would appear to have been a crash. The officers were acquitted. The verdict set off rioting in Miami in May 1980 that left 18 people dead and more than 1,000 arrested.
In 1982, Nevell Johnson Jr., a 20-year-old black man, who had worked as a Dade County messenger, was shot dead at a video arcade in Miami by a Cuban-born police officer. The shooting set off three days of rioting in Miami. The officer was acquitted.
And in 1989, a block from the arcade where Johnson was slain, Clement Anthony Lloyd was shot dead on his motorcycle by a Colombian-born police officer after a routine traffic stop. A passenger, also a black male, was killed when the motorcycle crashed. The police officer said he was acting in self-defense. He was acquitted of manslaughter in 1993 in Orlando.
Each case has its complexities, and each reflects an atmosphere that extends far beyond the Florida border. It's a moral challenge not for just one state but for America. Each case has a similar algorithm of caste and controversy in a region where old wounds appear to have yet to heal. But while each of the previous cases seems almost lost to memory now, it is the national outpouring of outrage from people of all backgrounds in response to the Trayvon Martin case that could signal the difference between the last century and this one.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Isabel Wilkerson.
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As Millions Fight
for Trayvon Martin,
Kill at Will Laws Flourish
It’s been over a month since Trayvon Martin was gunned down by George Zimmerman. An arrest has yet to be made, and charges have not been filed. The criminal justice system has only recently sprung into action to respond to the case, spurred largely by the public outrage and protests around the nation. As the state of Florida and Zimmernan’s defense gear up for legal proceedings, the question on many people’s minds is: can the criminal justice system deliver a modicum of that for Martin’s grieving family?
Zimmerman has escaped arrest by evoking Florida’s 2005 “stand your ground” law. The author of the law has said that it was never designed to protect vigilantes like Zimmerman, yet legal experts say the law presents significant obstacles to any attempt to seek justice for Martin.
A grand jury is set to convene on April 10 to hear evidence in the case and decide whether or not to charge Zimmerman, who admits he shot the unarmed black teen yet says he was acting in self-defense. Angela Corey, the newly assigned Florida attorney general announced with confidence that she won’t need the direction of a grand jury to decide how to proceed. Yet even she has acknowledged that the decision about how and whether to prosecute will hinge upon the winnable options available to her office.
“When we’re done with this, you’ll know what we could do with what we had,” Corey told the Miami Herald in a plea for patience from the public.
But patience is something that’s in short supply right now, as the days since Martin’s death march on.
Zimmerman has contended that on the rainy night of February 26, he killed Martin after he had his nose broken and head slammed into the concrete sidewalk by the 17-year-old boy. Martin was unarmed. Under common law, a person has the responsibility to do everything in their power to avoid using deadly force in self defense, “up to and including turning around and running away,” said Bob Dekle, a law professor at the University of Florida.
“But the stand your ground law provides that no matter where you are you can stand your ground and meet force with force, up to and including deadly force. Even if that’s offered to you, you don’t have to turn around and retreat.”
What prosecutors are now trying to figure out as they map out their legal game plan is whether or not Martin presented such a threat to Zimmerman. Some experts say that even under Florida’s loosely written “stand your ground” law, Zimmerman overstepped his rights.
Zimmerman made a 911 call that night, one of 46 he’d made in the course of eight years, just before he killed Martin. Zimmerman was concerned about the presence of a “suspicious” person in his gated Sanford, Florida, community, but ignored the directions of the dispatcher not to trail Martin. Both sides will likely argue most over what happened in the next few minutes. Zimmerman says that Martin assaulted him and broke his nose; Martin’s girlfriend says that she got a call from Martin who was worried about someone who was following him just before Zimmerman approached Martin and the line went dead.
“Martin had no weapon, he was clearly no threat to Zimmerman’s life, nor is there evidence that Martin posed the threat of great bodily harm,” said Sam Walker, a criminologist at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. “So when he invokes the law, he’s wrong.”
That point is something that even the author of the law, Florida lawmaker Dennis Baxley has argued as he’s gone on national television in recent weeks to defend his statute. “There is nothing in the stand your ground law that authorizes a person to pursue and confront,” said Baxley. Even a representative from the NRA, which was instrumental in crafting Florida’s law, suggested that it appears that the statute “doesn’t apply” to Zimmerman here. It’s a strategic move to distance themselves from someone who they’ll continue to depict as a rogue vigilante.
Yet the law presents a series of other obstacles to prosecutors. Dekle underlined a provision of the law which also says that if a person makes a claim of self defense the police are cautioned not to arrest.
The lead homicide investigator on the case recommended that Zimmerman be charged with manslaughter the night of the killing, ABC reported, but was instructed not to press charges by the state attorney’s office. The state attorney’s office at the time said there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Zimmerman, and the local police chief, who’s since stepped down, said he feared civil liability if he acted too aggressively on the case.
Florida’s “stand your ground” laws, which have marched across the country to nearly two dozen states since Florida first enacted theirs in 2005, are too loosely written, Walker said. They expand the rights of civilians, and allow folks like Zimmerman, who deputize themselves law enforcement officers, to confront perceived threats on their own.
“Stand your ground laws shouldn’t be called that,” said Victor Rios, a sociologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara. “It’s essentially giving citizens permission to do what cops have been doing forever to black and brown men: shoot first.” Indeed, Zimmerman imagined himself something of a cowboy police officer. While he was a member of the neighborhood watch team, national neighborhood watch organizations have since said he violated basic policies about confronting people and carrying firearms.
“People like Zimmerman are now thinking with this law: hey, this protects me from violently attacking this person and the law has told me that they are criminals because that’s how law enforcement treats them—so let me take the law into my own hands.”
Since Florida passed its law, justifiable homicides in the state of Florida have multiplied by more than 200 percent. “What this suggests is that there are a lot of people getting killed in situations where prior to stand your ground laws they’d be considered unlawful,” said Dekle.
It may have been confusion over the law, or basic irresponsibility or sloppiness, but the police department may not have investigated the case thoroughly enough to gather evidence that could help convict Zimmerman if he’s ever charged. Zimmerman, for instance, never was tested for drugs and alcohol—though Martin was in his autopsy after he was killed.
“The problem was if there was a slipshod investigation of a person where there’s no actual eyewitnesses who say he did it in self-defense it could be very hard for anyone to get to the proof and to prove a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt,” Kendall Coffey, a former U.S. attorney in Florida told MSNBC.
“I don’t want anyone to be unrealistic in terms of expectations as to where this ends up. It may already be too late to ever get a real prosecution out of this case.”
That devastating possibility would likely not surprise the very people who are calling for justice for Martin now, even as the calls for justice echo louder and louder.
“There’s a sense of, ‘When is the law going to arrive?’ When are we going to see some way in which justice isn’t something that has to be demanded but something that’s given to citizens in the country,” said Katheryn Russell-Brown, a law professor at the University of Florida.
“There has to be something done, some acknowledgement for this harm and the harm that I’m referring to is the [33] days and counting,” Russell-Brown said.
“Police tend to police poor people and young people of color when they don’t need to, and when we need them they’re not even there to give us the justice we deserve,” said Rios. Rios and Russell-Brown highlighted the simultaneous fatigue with the criminal justice system and outrage over the lack of movement so far.
Many are asking what exactly justice can look like in a criminal justice system which targets black males in particular, and so often fails to deliver even basic redress for victims of racialized, state-sanctioned violence. As the cases of Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo and Oscar Grant can attest, convictions are extremely difficult to procure, and verdicts, when they arrive, are invariably a bitter reminder of the myriad ways that the supposedly colorblind criminal justice system is structured against communities of color.
“By the time we get to the criminal justice system we’re in reactive mode—it may already be too late,” said Russell-Brown.
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CNN Isolates Audio
On Alleged ‘F*cking C**ns’
Trayvon Martin 911 Call
The 911 call that has many people convinced thatGeorge Zimmerman grumbled the phrase “f**kin’ c**ns” moments before shooting and killing 17 year-old Trayvon Martin could loom large when it comes to determining whether the federal government can prosecute the case. CNN, who often takes guff from critics for their sometimes pointless use of whiz-bang technology, put their state-of-the-art tech to good use on Wednesday night’s AC360, isolating and enhancing the audio from that call. The result is, at the very least, more convincing than the raw audio.
On Tuesday, Current TV’s The Young Turks became the first news show to air the 911 call uncensored, which was convincing enough on its own, in my view. However, for those who are still skeptical, Anderson Cooper had CNN reporter Gary Tuchman put audio design specialist Rick Sierra through the paces of cleaning up, enhancing, and isolating the phrase in question at CNN Atlanta’s Audio Suite 31.
Here’s the result:
Given the emotional punch of this story, Tuchman’s presentation is a bit clinical, but that detachment doesn’t blunt the impact of hearing that phrase over and over again. As Cooper pointed out, the Sanford Police are saying that they didn’t hear the slur, not that they “missed it,” as has been reported. Although reporter Tuchman maintains that the recording is not definitive, this should help clear things up a lot for the police. It’s also an example of CNN putting its technological resources to excellent journalistic use.
Although the cable news media didn’t cover Martin’s killing for several weeks after his death, once the coverage did begin, it ramped up quickly. After Current’s The Young Turks, who aired their first Trayvon Martin segment on their March 8 web show, CNN was one of the first networks to cover the Trayvon Martin story, beginning on March 13. MSNBC’s Rev. Al Sharpton also ran a segment, including an interview with Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump, on the 13th. The following day, the Martin story became part of both networks’ news rotations. Fox News ran their first Trayvon Martin segment on March 19, following the release of the 911 tapes, according to the TV Eyes Transcription database.
>via: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/cnn-isolates-audio-on-alleged-‘fcking-cns’-trayvon-martin-911-call/
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Sinead O’Connor Posts
Powerful Open Letter
About Trayvon Martin
“I would like to extend my very deepest sympathies to the family and other loved ones of murdered teenager, Treyvon Martin. I am very sad today (and am certain the whole of Ireland is) to learn of poor Treyvon’s terrifying ordeal and horrified by the fact his known and named and admitted killer has not been arrested, despite the crime having taken place a month ago. This is a disgrace to the entire human race.
For those out there who believe black people to be less than pure royalty, let me inform you of a little known, but scientifically proven, many times over, FACT. Which after reading, you will hopefully feel both very stupid and very sorry. For you dishonor your own mothers and grandmothers.
EVERY human being on earth, no matter what their culture, creed, skin colour, or nationality, shares one gene traceable back to one African woman. Scientists have named it ‘The Eve Gene’. This means ALL of us, even ridiculously stupid, ignorant, perverted, blaspheming racists are the descendants of one African woman.
One African woman is the mother of all of us. Africa was the first world. You come from there! Your skin may be ‘white’.. because you didn’t need it to be black any more where you lived. But as Curtis Mayfield said.. ‘You’re just the surface of our dark, deep well’. So you’re being morons. And God is having the last laugh at your ignorant expense.
If you hate black people, its yourself you hate. And the mother who bore you. If you kill or wish ill on black people, its yourself you kill and wish ill on. As well as the mother who bore you.”
O’Connor made headlines in the 1992 when she ripped up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a Saturday Night Live performance. She sang Bob Marley‘s “War,” changed some of the song’s lyrics and tore the photo to protest sexual abuse in the Catholic church.
This letter is powerful, timely and daring. O’Conner says things that few celebrities would risk saying.
>via: http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/03/sinead-oconnor-posts-powerful-open-let...
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A LETTER FROM
I would like to extend my very deepest sympathies to the family and other loved ones of murdered teenager, Treyvon Martin. I am very sad today (and am certain the whole of Ireland is) to learn of poor Treyvon's terrifying ordeal and horrified by the fact his known and named and admitted killer has not been arrested, despite the crime having taken place a month ago. This is a disgrace to the entire human race.
For those out there who believe black people to be less than pure royalty, let me inform you of a little known, but scientifically proven, many times over, FACT. Which after reading, you will hopefully feel both very stupid and very sorry. For you dishonor your own mothers and grandmothers.
EVERY human being on earth, no matter what their culture, creed, skin colour, or nationality, shares one gene traceable back to one African woman. Scientists have named it 'The Eve Gene'. This means ALL of us, even ridiculously stupid, ignorant, perverted, blaspheming racists are the descendants of one African woman.
One African woman is the mother of all of us. Africa was the first world. You come from there! Your skin may be 'white'.. because you didn't need it to be black any more where you lived. But as Curtis Mayfield said.. "You're just the surface of our dark, deep well". So you're being morons. And God is having the last laugh at your ignorant expense.
If you hate black people, its yourself you hate. And the mother who bore you. If you kill or wish ill on black people, its yourself you kill and wish ill on. As well as the mother who bore you.
When you dishonor the the utter glory and majesty of black people, you lie. Your heart lies to you and you let it. Despite seeing every day, all your life, how you and your country would be less than wonderfully functioning and inspiring to the world, without the manifold and glorious contributions made by the descendants of African slaves, who did not by the way actually ask to go to America and leave their future families there to be disrespected for eternity.
What are you doing hating yourself by hating your brothers and sisters who daily show you nothing but inspiration and love, despite having NOTHING, in their own country? Despite having barely a chance of anything, because of racism. Despite being granted no 'permission' for proper self-esteem.
These beautiful people continue to believe in and even manifest Jesus Christ better than you do. That alone could stand as the greatest reason your racism is blasphemy, were it not for all the other reasons.
These people you hate and fear ARE the body of Christ, just as we all are. Every child, woman or man. And they know it. Maybe thats why you cant bear to look at them. Because you see Jesus Christ and you cant stand the light.
Stop this ridiculous and uneducated attitude. You would be dead without black people. Think of all the greatest music ever composed. The greatest songs. The greatest inspirational heroes.. Muhammad Ali, Mandela, Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, Soujourner Truth, Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Curtis Mayfield. So many absolute angels, sent from God.
Without the inspiration of these people many millions of so-called 'white' people, including myself would not have had the strength to pay the price of life.
And black youth in America. I'm talking to you here too. I love you. So I don't mean to sound cross, I'm just being a mother.. Why are you killing each other? Why are you hating yourselves? You are the most important people God ever sent to this earth, every man, woman and child among you! Don't let uneducated people win and take your self-esteem or your esteem for each other, and make you kill each other. over guns, drugs, bling, or any other nonsense.
You are now entering YOUR version of a sort of civil rights movement and you're gonna see history being made in what has certainly the profoundest potential to become THE most wonderful country on earth. Because soon ALL 'isms' and 'ists' will end. including racism, as the people of the earth begin to understand, we are all one.
We came from one mother. We are all brothers and sisters. And we CAN get beyond this ILLUSION of separateness. With prayer and love. It CAN change. It WILL change. And YOU guys (young people of all kinds) are the ones who are gonna GENTLY change it. And you know where it starts? With MUSIC.
Don't be guided by rap. Gangsta or otherwise. Sure.. enjoy it.. adore it...as I do.. but realize this.. rap ain't about your civil or spiritual rights, baby boys and girls. It.. along with most music nowadays.. is about falsenesses and vanities. Bling, drugs, sex, guns and people- dissing. Its giving you the message you ain't 'good enough' if you don't have bling and ting.. and money. Or if you're not what it deems 'sexy'.
(This is true of all popular music not rap alone. I know. Its tragically true of all popular youth culture the world over).
Poor Curtis Mayfield must be crying all day and night ALL day and night in heaven, every day and night.. To see what has been so successfully achieved by those who sent guns, drugs, and bling to squash the civil rights movement. Now you all don't have to be murdered by racists any more.. you're murdering each other FOR them! And your parents and grandparents are left crying.
Go back to strong black musical guides who left you information in the 60s and 70s. when they were living through the civil rights struggle. Curtis Mayfield. The Impressions. Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson. Sing back the Holy Spirit ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, as those artists did.
Forget bling. Forget "Get Rich Or Die Trying". That is an evil message. Evil my dears is only life backwards. Turn it the right way up. With music. The messages American black youth are being given through music are not about the spiritual and therefore strong and conquering but PEACEFUL making of YOUR country into the wonderful place it secretly is and can be.. BECAUSE OF YOU, and BY YOU!!
You know not how you are adored, appreciated, valued, loved, cried for,smiled for, prayed for, all over the world. You know not how much inspiration and uplift-ment of heart you give to millions just by your presence on earth.
These musical guides will give you self-esteem. When you have self-esteem you can achieve anything. You can stand in the street as many did yesterday and change your country peacefully and with song. Chant down Babylon as the Rastas say. Rastafari will also give you self esteem. Investigate it.
You will notice, my beautiful sons and daughters, when you study, as you must, footage of all civil rights gatherings, how singing and music and sound and voice and the Holy Spirit were all employed and were so much part of the energy which moved things along.. just as running was in the South African gatherings I saw on tv in my own childhood, which inspired me to survive my own horrors.
What you listen to musically and whether or not you employ the Holy Spirit's highest will for your life is whats gonna make you transcend all you're having to suffer (the worst of which is low self-esteem.. or esteem based upon material 'success' or 'sexiness')) as a result of being the descendants of people who didn't ask to be stolen and leave you where you are. Delete bling. Get conscious with your music. Demand conscious music from your artists. Go back to the artists who left you proper guidance.
This is some serious stuff and we (all manner of musical artists) are too silent on matters of enormous spiritual importance. Lemme ask you.. Jayzee and Eminem et al... Why was it always the black people only worked in the post rooms of record companies, which was always in the basement? Why was it that as each floor went up the skins got paler till it was practically ghosts at the top? And all us artists.. even me.. said nothing? Those buildings (record companies) always struck me as being a microcosm or painting of America, racially speaking. Christ almighty.. if its like that in the music business how is anything ever going to change?
We, musical artists are too silent on important stuff. And it is our job to be the gate- keepers of truth. ALL the people of this earth must come together eventually and see that we are one. ALL artists must stand up. Black, white, yellow, green, pink, polka- dot.. and be a light in these times.
The world is going to shift massively this year.. spiritually speaking. Musical artists are to be a massive part of that shift. Get up, lets all of us. And light Jah fire.. and BE lights.
Where's the fire gone from music? Where is the love? the oneness? The knowing that music CAN and WILL move things in the right spiritual direction without hatred or violence? We must box clever. Sing the devil to sleep at your feet. Thats what Curtis teaches. He is the master of ALL musical masters. forget, forget, forget and forget again bling and guns and drugs and the worship of fame and money. Its time to wake up. We KNOW the power of music. Why aren't we using it to change anything important?
Musicians all over the world should now gently demand this child's killer be arrested immediately and the family of Treyvon Martin be immediately apologized to upon bended knee. Frankly... I myself would like an apology! America is a country I love and adore. what this man has done is un-American in the most horrific extreme.
Him not being arrested is extremely embarrassing and does absolutely NOT paint the true picture of of a country and a people who for the 90% majority are the kindest, most loving, intelligent, and wonderful people you could know.
Please.. ALL Americans should deplore this crime. As should ALL people of ALL nations. And deplore the fact this man has not been arrested. All Irish people should do the same. And I ask that we here in Ireland should express through our American embassy that we would like to see this man arrested this very minute. Because racism is not acceptable. Nor is vigilantism. And this was very clearly in no way at all a case of self-defense. The child was un armed. I know not if he was misbehaving. But a 17 year old un armed child misbehaving, whether he was or not, does not deserve to be shot dead.
I leave you with some lyrics of Curtis Mayfield's which I feel are appropriate for this situation. I am certain Curtis would have wanted to contribute to discussion on the issue of Treyvon's murder and the condition of young black people in America today.. so here goes.... the song is called This Is My Country.. from the album of the same name.
Some people think we don't have the right to say its my country
before they give in
they'd rather fuss and fight
than say its my country
I've paid three hundred years or more
of slave-driving sweat and welts on my back This is my country
Too many have died in protecting my pride
for me to go second class
We've survived a hard blow and I want you to know that you must face us at last
And I know you will give consideration
shall we perish unjust or live equal as a nation? This is my country.