March for Trayvon Martin Held in Sanford
Thousands joined a march Saturday through the Florida town where 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was shot and killed by a neighborhood watch volunteer, vowing to continue protesting until an arrest is made.
Protesters carried signs, chanted “Justice for Trayvon,” and clutched the hands of their children while they walked from Crooms Academy of Information Technology — the county’s first high school for black students — to the Sanford Police Department. The march was organized by the NAACP was one of several taking place over the weekend.
“We live in the middle of an American paradox,” Rev. Al Sharpton told the crowd. “We can put a black man in the White House but we cannot walk a black child through a gated neighborhood. We are not selling out, bowing out or backing down until there is justice for Trayvon.”
Martin was shot to death by 28-year-old George Zimmerman on Feb. 26 as he walked from back from a convenience store to his father’s fiancee’s home in a gated community outside Orlando. The case has stirred a national conversation about race and the laws of self-defense. Martin, a black teenager from Miami, was unarmed when he was shot by Zimmerman, whose father is white and mother is Hispanic. Zimmerman told police the teen attacked him before he shot in self-defense.