Okay, lets come back down to reality here. I haven't thought much about this whole Zimmerman/Martin dust up mostly because I don't care. It was just another media controlled circus. This was a clean cut case of what happens when a wanna be police meets up with a wanna be gangsta. I am completely disgusted with the way this incident was twisted into a race thing and I wanted no part of it. I figured that even a silly state like Florida could work this one out. I was wrong.
Zimmerman is a free man today because the prosecution was completely inept and tried the case as a "made for television" show trial. Their witnesses were at best, morons, and they made racism the main topic. Zimmerman didn't kill Martin because he was black, he shot him because Martin was beating the breaks off of him.
Here's the rub. A 17-year-old young man is dead because Zimmerman took it upon himself to be the "by gowd" law that night. Martin turned the tables on him and Zimmerman killed him.
The courts have spoken and Zimmerman walks. That's it and that's all , for good or ill. Now to the point of why I wrote about this craziness at all.
This morning I watched Martin's legal team say that Trayvon had joined the ranks of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers. I call bravo sierra. This is a stupid statement designed to play to the cameras and only goes to show a complete ignorance of history.
Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black kid from Chicago visiting family in Mississippi in 1955. While in town, he flirted with the 21-year-old (white) wife of a grocery store owner. A couple of nights later, Till was kidnapped from his uncle's house by the husband and his half brother. Till was beaten, had his eyes gouged out, and was finally shot in the head. His body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barb wire.
The trial attracted a vast amount of press attention. The killers were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder.
Medger Evers was a World War II veteran and civil rights activist involved in efforts to overturn segregation at the University of Mississippi. He was killed by a sniper's bullet in his driveway, in front of his wife and children. Evers was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, where he received full military honors before a crowd of more than 3,000.
Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the White Citizens' Council, was arrested for the murder and twice received mistrials. He was finally convicted 30 years later in 1994 and died in prison.
While the death of Trayvon Martin is tragic. Lets not get carried away.
Anthony Wilson
Ooltewah