TRAYVON MARTIN IS ANOTHER ROSA PARKS

TRAYVON MARTIN IS ANOTHER ROSA PARKS! Updated: Friday July 19, 2013 Saturday, March 24, 2012 By Rev. Dr. Larry Delano Coleman (Note: this article was originally written in 2012 where it was posted to Facebook. I adhere to its central premise, but have updated a few facts.) Trayvon Martin is another “Rosa Parks,” symbolically. “In what respect,” one may wonder? In respect to black male homicides, which, to this point, have been perceived as faceless, nameless, hopeless, thug-based, ghetto-located, impoverished, and black-on-black. Trayvon's persona is handsome, hopeful, innocent, vulnerable, and middle classed. Having the "right" symbol like Rosa Parks is important. He is it! Dr. King, among others, had repeatedly reflected upon Mrs. Park’s symbolic value in David J. Garrow’s epic biography, Bearing The Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Rosa Parks was not the first black woman to refuse to give up her seat in 1955, in then-racially segregated Montgomery, Alabama. A pregnant, black teenager with a juvenile court record had committed that same act of civil disobedience, only weeks earlier. But, Mrs. Parks was married, church-going, respectable. She was also the secretary of the Montgomery NAACP. She was a humble, well-known, well-connected seamstress in Negro civil rights circles, and a deaconness in the AME church. She was the "right" one, the right symbol! She came to symbolize the civil rights movement. So, too, is Trayvon Martin in death. He has become every black person's symbolic son, little brother, cousin, boyfriend, or uncle; including, by empathetic expression, President Barack Obama’s own son, symbolically. Some observers have urged, and strained, an analogy between Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin, in that both males were black teenagers who were murdered, because of their race in the South by white men. Though facially appealing, the comparison dissolves upon closer examination. First of all, Emmett Till is alleged to have “wolf-whistled” at a white woman in 1955 in Money, Mississippi, after he had come from Chicago, Illinois, to visit relatives during the summer. That act violated an enshrined cultural taboo in Mississippi, which proscribed any sexual intimations between black males and white females; although its opposite, white males and black females, was sanctioned by centuries of miscegenation, including remorseless rape. Trayvon Martin, by contrast, is not alleged to have done anything remotely provocative or taboo. He was simply returning from a convenience store into a gated community in Sanford, Florida, where he was temporarily visiting, walking, carrying candy and iced tea. Emmett Till was beaten, shot, and lynched by a mob of white terrorists, that white woman’s husband among them. His body was then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with his neck attached to and weighted down by an industrial fan. Trayvon Martin was shot one-time in the chest and killed by a “white” volunteer, security guard, who was even unaccredited, purportedly, by the “Neighborhood Watch” group he claimed to represent. George Zimmerman, had stalked and killed Trayvon Martin, after reporting him as “suspicious—looking” in a recorded 911 call. On 46 prior occasions, he had made similar calls to Sanford police about other such black men. In this call, he was told to await police assistance, and not to pursue Trayvon, who had fled, fearing “some strange white man” who had kept following him. Exasperated because “they always get away,” he later confessed to police, Zimmerman determined to disregard the dispatcher, and then pursued this frightened teenager in his vehicle till he finally cut him off and killed him. President Barack Obama, reacting to the nationwide outcry, marches, rallies, and protests demanding the arrest and prosecution of George Zimmerman, said this on Friday, March 23, 2012, at a news conference: “I think all of us have to do some soul searching to figure out how does something like this happen,” Obama said. “And that means we examine the laws, the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident. “But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin: 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 going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.” Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law is based on a model statute created by ALEC, an organization of “conservative” policy makers, that is funded by some of the nation’s leading corporations. Such laws exist in 26 states, and operate against blacks, under the legislative/judicial gloss of feigned, objective neutrality. Deeply rooted in the “white supremist” psyches of both races, its historical provenance taps into the “hunter,” i.e., gun-toter, Zimmerman—versus—the “hunted,”i.e. “Skittles”-carrier, Martin dyad that caused this senseless killing. Trayvan’s murder exposed this deadly plot! As prevailing social paradigm--municipal ordinances girded by state statute-- compelled segregated “Jim Crow,” seating on privately-owned buses in Montgomery, Alabama; so, also, a similar paradigm, formalized in Florida state statute, enabled George Zimmerman to pursue, to shoot, and to kill 17-year old pedestrian, Trayvon Martin; and, to avoid arrest, by claiming “self-defense,” though he was carried down to the police station and “questioned” by Sanford police, thereafter, purportedly. Thus, the official public policy nexus between the Rosa Parks and the Trayvon Martin occurrences ties together these two nationally transformative incidents, definitively. No such official public policy existed with respect to Emmett Till, only a sordid custom of murdering black men at will, with impunity! Rosa Parks became the symbol of the civil rights movement. Trayvon Martin has become the symbol of the justice rights. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted over a year. It featured blacks devising their own carpools, gypsy cabs, or righteously walking, rather than to ride the bus; rather than to support economically segregated seating; rather than to be disrespected. Their brilliant leadership and organization wore down the private bus company and the city of Montgomery. A boycott of Florida is now gaining national momentum due to its “Stand Your Ground” statute, and due to the July 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman by an all-white female jury on charges of 2nd degree murder and manslaughter. The blacks emerged victorious under the reluctant leadership of a 26-year old Baptist preacher named Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., then-pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Dr. King later founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.He is a revered international icon. Another reluctant leader now submergent in the Trayvon Martin justice campaign is the President of the United States, Barack Obama, the first black President of the United States, although Attorney General Eric Holder, another first, now leads it nominally. That is ironic and iconic, by itself! #30