In Sanford, the Murder of Trayvon Martin Reawakens Demons of the Past

“In this town, we imprison someone for killing their dog, but someone who shoots at a black boy remains free. It’s a problem here and has been for a long time.” Turner Clayton delivered his sentence in a calm voice. On Saturday, it was he who opened the march of protest, the third of its kind in Sanford. The march was intended to ensure the arrest of George Zimmerman, the self-proclaimed security guard who, on Feb. 26, killed a 17-year-old high school student, Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman has not been prosecuted.

The 59 year-old Clayton, the local head of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, has seen this before. The absurd death of Martin and the freeing of his murderer, Zimmerman, are only the nth episode of a continuous series of racial blunders committed by the Sanford police in a town of 53,000 inhabitants, of which 30 percent are black, and which is situated 60 km away from Disney’s “Magic Kingdom.” It’s not a question of classic “police blunders.” The police do not kill black people, but they have a tendency to free their murderers. “Everyone says: If George Zimmerman had been black and Trayvon Martin white, the murderer would have been arrested immediately and no one would have ever heard about it,” continues Clayton. The Trayvon Martin affair reminds him of the one involving Justin Collison, who was not arrested in 2012 after having savagely beaten a homeless black man because his father was a policeman from Sanford. It took a terribly incriminating video posted onto YouTube for justice to be served.

It also brings back the memory of the 2006 Travis McGill drama, in which a young black male was killed by a bullet in the back in a car park of one of the town’s shopping centers by a guard who suspected him of wanting to steal a car. The guard was not questioned. His father was also a police officer.

This time, history is even clearer still, and therefore totally emblematic. Martin was not suspected by anyone of being a thief, since he was returning to his father’s* home armed solely with a can of ice tea and a bag of candy. And George Zimmerman, who does not deny the murder, is accused of having lied by pretending to have received blows to the head. A police video shows his undamaged head just afterwards. Today, emotion has won over the whole of America, with people of all skin colors joining together. A dozen television broadcasting vehicles are constantly parked right in front of the brand-new police headquarters in Sanford. A portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. takes pride of place in Turner Clayton’s modest living room. He says his fight is focused not only on the immediate issue – the demand for “justice for Trayvon Martin” – but also on the long repressed racial history of this town in central Florida.

Next to the white town, which was baptized in 1870 with the name of its founder, Henry Sanford, a major land-owner, there existed an independent black town called Goldsboro between 1891 and 1911. The second black city founded in Florida after the 1863 emancipation, it was populated by descendants of slaves employed in the citrus fruit plantations and celery fields – local specialties – as well as by the railway company that exported agricultural products to the north. The very first town in Florida to be run the same way by blacks, Eatonville, can be found near Orlando.

But in 1911, Sanford, due to a lack of land, purely and simply annexed Goldsboro. The black town councilors lost the legal battle to conserve their independence. The blacks, who were responsible for their own administration (schools, taxes, etc.), were robbed of their prerogative. They were also stripped of their identifying characteristics. The roads of Goldsboro, which bore the names of heroes of the emancipation, were de-baptized by the municipality of Sanford. Forrest Lake, the name of the mayor who decided on the annexation, was even given, for a time, to a large avenue of the former black town.

“Sanford levied taxes on the former black town, yet invested nothing into it,” explains the head of the NAACP. “It is still true today: The black district benefits solely from federal grants!” The racial map of the town, published on estate agency sites, is more explicit: The boundaries have hardly changed.

The ultimate symbol, the new police station, is at the epicenter of the Trayvon Martin affair and is situated precisely at the entry of the former Goldsboro, a district which is planted with magnificent tropical trees but terribly disadvantaged. “It’s the only sign of attention from the municipality,” says Clayton with irony. As Sharon Austin, head of the department of African American studies at the University of Florida, said, Martin’s death is a “painful time machine.”**

* Editor’s note: Martin was, in fact, returning to the home of his girlfriend’s father.

**Editor’s note: the original quotation, accurately translated, could not be verified.