Former President Barack Obama is marking the 10th anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, as he released a statement about the sad event 10-years ago.
Trayvon Martin’s death triggered huge outrage, and Barack Obama was in office when the year 17-year-old Martin was shot and killed by George Zimmerman in Florida on Feb. 26, 2012. The former president commemorated a decade since Martin’s killing with a video posted to Instagram on Saturday in which he reflected on Treyvon Martin’s legacy.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been ten years since Trayvon Martin was killed. Trayvon wasn’t so different from me. When I look at photos, I see how I resembled him as a teenager, and as a young Black man, the way I was perceived was similar to the way Trayvon was perceived. Luck might have been the only thing that separated us,” he began his caption.
Obama added that he “was deeply frustrated in the wake of [Martin’s] death and tried to figure out what my administration could do to address the systemic issues that led to this tragedy.”
In response, Obama formed the My Brother’s Keeper initiative, an organization founded “to empower and support young boys and men of colour across the country,” he explained.
Obama said that Trayvon Martin’s death activated “an entire new generation of young civil rights leaders who took grassroots organizing to a new level,” adding, “by leveraging social media, building a coalition, and making their voices heard, they were able to move so many people from anguish to action.”
“We still have a long way to go, but my hope is that we can look back on this moment and the movement that emerged in response to Trayvon’s death as one more step in our country’s journey to come to terms with our past,” he added.
“It will take all of us to make that a reality, and I hope you’ll join us in this work,” Obama concluded.
Zimmerman, who fatally shot Martin in 2012 when the teenager was on a trip to a convenience store to buy Skittles and iced tea, claimed he had been defending himself under Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” laws. He was eventually acquitted of murder charges in 2013.