SANFORD, Fla. — Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton are in the car with their attorney, Ben Crump, after a long day in the Seminole County Criminal Court in Sanford, Florida, where they have been daily observers since jury selection began June 10th, in the trial of George Zimmerman, the man who shot their 17-year-old son Trayvon Martin to death in February 2012. Zimmerman has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder.
“You can’t describe the feeling when you learn that your loved one has been lost. That’s like …” Martin says before trailing off. As the case plays out in court, both parents say they’re fighting a daily battle to preserve the memory of the Trayvon they knew, and to not let him become a media caricature.
“I think one of things that everybody seems to overlook is the fact that, OK, that was our child,” Martin said Wednesday, in a telephone interview with theGrio. “So whatever your opinion is of him, that’s your opinion. At the end of the day that was our child, and we knew our child and we loved him. And no matter what you try to say about him, [or] how you try to spin his image, or you try to assassinate his character, we know his character, we know his image, and it’s up to us to not let you smear him.”
A battle of images
Zimmerman says he shot Martin, who was unarmed, in self-defense after Martin attacked him. Zimmerman, who was a neighborhood watch volunteer, called the non-emergency police line to report seeing someone suspicious as he drove through the gated community in Sanford where he lived.
The shooting has become a matter of political polarization, particularly after President Obama told a news conference last year that if he had a son, “he would look like Trayvon.” It has pierced the cultural landscape: pro athletes, celebrities and members of congress have donned hoodies, introduced resolutions, and reached out to the family, making Martin’s death a symbol of what some see as the profiling of young, black men, and disparate treatment by police. Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, has repeatedly said that “race should not be a factor in the George Zimmerman case and should never have been made one.”
O’Mara has also pushed back against the photographic depiction of Martin in the press — a timeline of photos provided by the family: a young Trayvon Martin skiing, or in his football uniform, or receiving a kiss on the cheek from his dad, or horseback riding at Fulton’s birthday party in a picture taken just a week before his death. And there’s the ubiquitous black and white closeup “hoodie” picture that has shown up on T-shirts and murals, and protest signs, and which peers out from “Justice for Trayvon” signs hung in the windows of some of the black barbershops, bars and stores in Sanford. They are snapshots from a mother’s memory of her son. The defense team has said the images paint a misleading picture of the person George Zimmerman encountered on that rainy night last February 26th.
The defense has its own montage: grainy video stills from the security camera at the 7-11 where Martin bought the Skittles candy and Arizona iced tea that were found with his gray hoodie. Texts and photos from Martin’s cell phone, posted to the defense website, that show the teen blowing smoke out of his mouth, or wearing a removable gold “grill.” Circuit Judge Debra Nelson ruled the texts and images could not be used in the defense’s opening statements when the trial begins.
O’Mara later apologized on the Zimmerman legal defense website for mischaracterizing a video from the phone, which he had said during a court hearing showed Martin taping two friends beating up a homeless man. The video showed two men fighting over a bike. O’Mara said the purpose of the video was not to smear the dead teen, but rather to authenticate his voice. (Both parents insist the voice heard on the fight tape is not Martin’s.) But O’Mara makes no apologies about doing what he feels is necessary to defend his client, saying that if prosecutors “open the door” while putting on their case, Florida law could allow him to explore Trayvon Martin’s background.
Worse than what has emerged through the legal process, the family’s lawyers say, have been the often anonymous attacks on websites, describing Trayvon Martin as a thug and a drug dealer, or circulating a photo that was supposed to be of Martin, but was actually the 28-year-old, heavily-tattooed rapper The Game. In March, Zimmerman’s older brother Robert, tweeted a comparison between Martin and a Georgia teen, De’Marquise Elkins, who is accused of shooting a toddler to death after asking the child’s mother for money. He later apologized, and blamed the outburst on the “liberal media.” A Florida man last May claimed to have sold out of targets depicting a hooded figure holding iced tea and Skittles. And a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, Todd Kincannon, posted a series of offensive tweets on Super Bowl Sunday, including one saying Trayvon Martin deserved to be “put down like a rabid dog.”
On Tuesday, Harry Houck, a former New York police detective and FoxNews.com commentator said during an online discussion of the case that “Trayvon Martin would be alive today if he didn’t have a street attitude…”
“You sit back and you evaluate how much energy you spend in trying to correct [those] things,” Tracy Martin said. “So right now I feel that as a father I’m trying to clean up a lot of the negativity that’s being publicized about Tray, and the reason I feel I have to do that is because I know that that wasn’t Trayvon’s image, and that’s not what he was about. And as a father, the things that you instill in your child … you just can’t let that be tarnished by whatever the opposition wants to… kind of spray him with.”
Next: Like ‘two peas in a pod’
Tracy Martin has been preparing for his second Father’s Day without the son family members and Trayvon Martin’s former football coach have described as so close to his father, they were “like two peas in a pod.”
The elder Martin was a fixture at football practice at Forzano park in Miramar, the town next door to where Fulton lived, and where Trayvon was a standout player for the Wolverines. Wolverines coach Jerome Horton told USA Today in December that the elder Martin would make his son sit out games when he broke a rule or messed up in school. And Martin often brags of how a 9-year-old Trayvon saved him from a fire in his apartment by calling 911.
Martin had taken his son to Sanford as part punishment, part cooling off period, after the teen was suspended from school following the discovery of a baggy in his backpack that contained marijuana residue. Tracy Martin’s girlfriend, with whom he and Trayvon were staying in Sanford, has a son, then 14 years old, and some of the phone texts released by the defense were from Tracy Martin, telling his son to be a big brother to the younger boy. The boy told television interviewers last year that Trayvon asked if he wanted anything from the store during a break in the NBA All Star Game, and that the Skittles were for him.
Tracy Martin and his girlfriend had gone out to dinner, and left the boys at her townhouse. Martin’s sister-in-law has said that when Martin called family members to break the news that Trayvon was dead, he simply broke down sobbing, “my baby gone, my baby gone…”
Now, Martin and Fulton are learning how to grieve in the glare of the public spotlight. And they’re trying to find some meaning in it.
“For dads that are in my place I would tell them, hold on to God, be encouraged, there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel,” says Martin. “This is a long journey, and a long process, and along the way you find out a lot of things, mostly about yourself.”
“As strong as we are as human beings, there’s always a breaking point in all of us,” he says. “But this tragedy has seemed to bring me closer to myself, and to realizing that there’s a bigger purpose out there, and what I stand for. And right now that bigger purpose is to serve and get justice for Trayvon.”
‘We decided to have a legacy for Trayvon’
Martin and Fulton divorced in 1999, but in the wake of their son’s death, they have become a constant presence together. They appear, side-by-side, in court, in churches, and in front of banks of television cameras each time they walk out of the Sanford courthouse to react to the day’s events. They’ve started a foundation in their son’s name, and Sybrina has spent much of her time, when not in court hearings, and with Martin when he’s not on the road — traveling the country to advocate against “Stand Your Ground” gun laws like the Florida statute cited by Sanford police in their initial decision not to arrest Zimmerman. A task force appointed by Florida’s governor last year concluded without recommending any changes to Florida’s self-defense gun law.
Fulton and Martin are undeterred.
“We decided to have a legacy for Trayvon, to try to help other families,” Fulton said of the foundation, saying its overall purpose is to help “victims of senseless gun violence.”
She says that when their son was killed, they were lucky enough to find “a strong legal team that kind of gave us direction.” Crump and his law partner, Darryl Parks, and Sanford attorney Natalie Jackson, are often stitched to the couple’s side. And Crump is fiercely protective, especially of Fulton, with the press. Fulton said other families might not be so lucky, and that more than legal advice, families in their position need someone to talk to who understands what no parent should.
“We want to just try to help, even if its just words of encouragement.” She said. After the trial, they plan to put together a national conference call for families who’ve experienced a loss due to gun violence, “so we can speak amongst each other, and we can pray for each other.”
“We kind of know what each other are going through,” she said of the families they’ve already talked to. “And that [helps] out a great deal because it’s hard talking to someone and they have no clue of just the journey that you’ve been on. But somebody that’s in your same shoes, thats going through some of the same things that you’re going through, you can relate to them a little better.”
Fulton said one of the families they’ve been in touch with are the parents of Jordan Davis, the 17-year-old who was shot to death in Jacksonville, Florida last November after 45-year-old Michael David Dunn allegedly fired multiple shots into the car carrying Davis and three friends, following a dispute at a gas station over their loud music. Dunn is charged with first-degree murder and three counts of attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty, claiming he felt threatened by the teens. Fulton said they reached out to Davis’ parents “just to show them that we are in support of them and that we stand with them.”
The foundation keeps Fulton busy. She is on extended leave from her job after co-workers donated their sick and comp time to her last year. And she finds ways to talk about her loss publicly. During an interview last December, she told Essence.com she was on an “emotional roller coaster.”
“He had just turned 17 a few days before he was killed,” she told Essence. “I remember how much he was looking forward to senior picture day. I won’t ever get a chance see those moments; to see his high school graduation picture, his prom pictures, his wedding pictures. I won’t get that experience. It’s still difficult to swallow because Trayvon had his whole life ahead of him. Seventeen years just seems so short to me, but I do thank God for the time that he did give me with him.”
Today, she and Tracy Martin are trying to focus on the future, and the good they hope they can do for other families.
“Our teenager has no voice any longer,” she says, “so as a parent, I feel it is necessary for us to speak on his behalf.”
Fulton and Martin are often flanked by pastors, from Sanford, and from Fulton’s Miami church, both in and out of court. Fulton often refers to her strong belief in God.
“It just helps to know that you’re not standing there by yourself,” she says. “And that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is a higher being and that there is somebody that sits high and is looking low and that is watching all of this, and that’s helping you stand up because even just a normal day isn’t normal anymore.”
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