Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, shared her hurt over the killing of unarmed African American teenager Michael Brown and offered words of encouragement in a heartbreaking letter to the Brown family published by Time magazine.
“I hate that you and your family must join this exclusive yet growing group of parents,” Sybrina Fulton wrote. “I wish I had a word of automatic comfort but I don’t. I wish I could say that it will be alright on a certain or specific day, but I can’t. I wish that all of the pain that I have endured could possibly ease some of yours but it won’t.”
Fulton continued, however, that neither the death of Michael nor Trayvon would be in vain. “The galvanizations of our communities must be continued beyond the tragedies,” she wrote. “While we fight injustice, we will also hold ourselves to an appropriate level of intelligent advocacy. If they refuse to hear us, we will make them feel us. Some will mistake that last statement as being negatively provocative. But feeling us means feeling our pain; imagining our plight as parents of slain children. We will no longer be ignored. We will bond, continue our fights for justice, and make them remember our children in an appropriate light.”
Last week, Fulton joined Ron Davis, the father of slain teen Jordan Davis, in Geneva, Switzerland, where the parents testified before the United Nations Committee responsible for the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). Trayvon Martin was 17-years-old when he was gunned down by George Zimmerman. Jordan Davis was also 17-years-old when his life was taken by Michael Dunn at a Florida gas station. Both teens were unarmed. Zimmerman was acquitted. A mistrial was declared on Dunn’s first-degree murder charge. Fulton and Davis testified about the role race-based privilege played in the sentencing of their sons’ killers. The US government’s CERD Review took place last Wednesday and Thursday, just as reports of media arrests in Ferguson were breaking news.
Media Resources: Time Magazine 8/18/14; CNN 2/17/14; Feminist Newswire 7/18/13; US Human Rights Network 8/2014