Churchgoers don hoodies in honor of slain teen
Services across the country call for justice, activism
EATONVILLE, Fla. – Wearing hooded sweatshirts similar to the one that Trayvon Martin wore on the night he was killed, many preachers and worshippers echoed calls for justice Sunday in the shooting death of an unarmed black teenager in Florida last month.
The one-month anniversary of Martin’s death is today. He was shot while wearing a “hoodie” as he walked home on a rainy night in a gated community. The neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, is the son of a white father and Hispanic mother, and the demands to charge him in Martin’s slaying have grown ever louder. He had called police to report the hooded figure as suspicious; the 17-year-old Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea, talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone.
In African-American and other religious centers from Florida to Atlanta, New York and Chicago, messages from pulpits couldn’t help but touch on a seemingly avoidable tragedy that continues to be rife with more questions than answers. But while the call continued for the arrest of Zimmerman, there were also pleas to use the incident to spark a larger movement.
“How do we turn pain into power?” the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked a standing-room only congregation of hundreds while preaching at Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church in Eatonville, Fla., about 20 miles from the site of the Sanford shooting. “How do we go from a moment to a movement that curries favor?”
“The blood of the innocent has power,” Jackson said to shouts of “Amen” and loud clapping.
Jackson invoked the names of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy bludgeoned and shot to death in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman, and slain civil rights figures Medgar Evans and Martin Luther King Jr.
“There’s power in the blood of Emmett Till! There’s power in the blood of Medgar Evers! There’s power in the blood of Dr. King!” declared the 70-year-old Jackson, who marched with King.
Jackson made a direct plea to change the “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law that many believe authorities in Florida used to avoid arresting him.
Amid the outcry over the lack of charges against Zimmerman, the Sanford police chief and state’s attorney in the case have both stepped aside. The U.S. Justice Department has opened a civil rights probe into the shooting, and a grand jury is scheduled to meet April 10 to consider evidence in the case.
Zimmerman’s attorney has said he believes the case falls under Florida’s stand-your-ground law, which dictates that a person has the right to stand his or her ground and “meet force with force” if attacked. Attorney Craig Sonner has said Zimmerman is not a racist.
In New York City, Middle Collegiate Church pastor Jacqueline Lewis said the church must assume both a spiritual and political role to end “the epidemic” of racism. She encouraged her congregants to send packages of Skittles to Sanford police, sign an online petition and attend an April conference on building multiracial congregations.