On a rainy day in April 1965, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. ascended the steps of the Boston Common bandstand to deliver a speech. His topic was school desegregation. An estimated 22,000 people braved the spring showers to hear the civil rights leader.
On another wet April day nearly fifty years after King’s visit, the Boston Common bandstand was again host to the fight for civil rights in the United States. Over 150 people gathered Thursday, April 12, at a rally to demand justice for Trayvon Martin, a black high-school student shot and killed in Sanford, FL on February 26. The rally was organized by the Boston branch of the NAACP and featured a dozen speakers, all leaders in their communities and in struggles for civil rights and social justice in the Boston area.
This was the latest in a series of actions in Boston responding to Martin’s murder. On Saturday, April 7, an estimated 500 people marched from Ruggles station to Dudley Square. Along the way, they chanted “Being Black is not a crime” and carried signs stating “No to Racial Profiling” and “We are all Trayvon Martin.”
The day before the Ruggles-to-Dudley march, about a hundred people attended a town hall forum in Dudley Square, featuring a teach-in about violence against black men and boys in the United States. The forum was organized by the Blackstonian, a community news service for peoples of color in the Boston area.
“We call this an attack on black men and boys because it’s a reality,” explained Jamahrl Crawford. “If you are a black man or a boy, or you love one, you probably already know this.” In a detailed multimedia presentation, Crawford reviewed over fifty individual incidents, dating between 1997 and 2012, in which a black man or boy was murdered by police, vigilantes, or whites supremacists in the United States. The point, Crawford emphasized, is that Martin’s killing “is not an isolated incident.”
Among the cases was that of Patrick Dorismond, a 26-year-old Haitian man who was shot and killed by an undercover narcotics officer in New York City in 2000. The officer had petitioned Dorismond for drugs. An altercation ensued. “For defending himself against the stereotype that the undercover officer was projecting onto him, this man ended up dead,” Crawford summarized.
At the NAACP rally, Crawford reiterated the message of his teach-in: “From eight to eighty, whether you have on a suit or something like this”—Crawford pointed towards his hoodie—“it matters not. If you are a black man or a boy you are seen as ‘suspicious.’”
All three events drew connections between the Trayvon Martin case and legislation currently under consideration in Massachusetts, referred to as a “Stand your ground” law. Similar laws have already been adopted by two dozen states. In Florida, law enforcement agencies cited that state’s “Stand your ground” law as their reason for declining to arrest Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman. Although Zimmerman acknowledged that he left his vehicle expressly to pursue Martin, state authorities construed his subsequent shooting of Martin at point-blank range as an action protected by state law. (On April 11th, more than a month after the killing, a Florida special prosecutor announced that Zimmerman would be charged with second-degree murder.)
Since 2007, Massachusetts State Senator Stephen Brewer (D) has sponsored three versions of a bill that closely corresponds to this Florida statute. At the NAACP rally, Larry Ellison, President of the Massachusetts Association of Minority Law Enforcement Officers, spoke firmly against both the proposed bill and the name the bill’s supporters have claimed for it. “This is not about ‘Standing your ground,’” Ellison stated, “A more accurate name would be ‘The last man standing tells his version.’ This law will not help [police officers] do our jobs.”
Another theme at these events has been Zimmerman’s widely reported identification as Hispanic. Alejandra St. Guillen, executive director of ¿Oíste?, called on attendees Thursday to consider the “role of skin color in how we view one another even in our own minority communities.” Similarly, Brandi Artez, one of the organizers of Saturday’s march, spoke for solidarity between African-Americans and Hispanics: “I am a black Latina,” she said, “When people see me, they see a black. Don’t let anyone tell you that Latinos are not standing up for Trayvon Martin. We stand together.”
At the NAACP rally, Councillor Yancey reminded the gathering of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on the same site in April 1965. Reflections on the history of the civil rights movement were balanced by expectations for its future, as Boston University law student Chelsea Lewis noted the presence of many young people at rally.
Attendees then walked across the Common to the Statehouse. There they participated in a lobbying campaign against the so-called “Stand your ground” law. The bill is scheduled for a vote by the Joint Committee on the Judiciary on April 27.