Actor Jamie Foxx joined Martin’s parents and several hundred protesters for a candlelight vigil in New York City’s Union Square, while a smaller crowd estimated at 110 to 125 met at a park in the Florida town where Martin died, vowing to continue to agitate for an end to racial discrimination.
“We want you (to) know we love you and we won’t leave you,” Foxx told Martin’s mother, Sybrina Fulton, in New York.
Neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, 17, in the Orlando suburb of Sanford on February 26, 2012, and initially went free based on his claims of self defense. Then a national outcry forced the city’s police chief to resign and the governor to appoint a special prosecutor.
Zimmerman now faces second-degree murder charges and a June trial. He has maintained his innocence, and supporters say he has been unfairly tainted as racist, noting the neighborhood had been hit by a wave of break-ins and that Zimmerman is of mixed race – his father is white and his mother Afro-Peruvian.
In Sanford, the case triggered deep emotions, and protesters staged a candlelight vigil and moment of silence at 7:15 p.m., the time Martin was killed, at Fort Mellon Park.
“There are no excuses for violence against our children. Let us take the tragedy of Trayvon’s death and use it for good,” said organizer Geri Hepburn, a white parent of a teenage son who became politically active as a result of the shooting.
The crowd was small compared to the thousands who filled the same park at the apex of public outrage of the killing last year, when the story dominated national news for weeks.