AP PHOTO/MANUEL BALCE CENETA
“Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago.”
— PRESIDENT OBAMA
tion in black and white and blood
about our original constitutional
and social sin.
The reasons for its revival now:
the Supreme Court, Trayvon, Detroit and Martin Luther King Jr.
In June, the court issued opinions restricting the reach of affirmative action and the Voting
Rights Act, twin engines of African-American upward mobility.
Earlier this month, a jury in
Sanford, Fla., acquitted George
Zimmerman of all charges, accepting his claim that he had shot and
killed a 17-year-old unarmed black
youth named Trayvon Martin in
self-defense. The 2012 shooting
and the 2013 verdict divided the
country, but united Black America
around the reasonable fear that no
President
Obama spoke
about his
personal
experience as
a black man
in America
after the
Zimmerman
verdict.