Rest in Power

by Sybrina Fulton

  Sybrina went outside to talk with her.

  “I have a letter for you,” Rachel said, and she handed her a neatly folded piece of lined notebook paper, on which her friend had written Rachel’s words about Trayvon’s last night.

  Sybrina invited her inside the house, and I went into the kitchen so that they could speak alone. Sybrina told me that Rachel was a nervous wreck and didn’t seem to want to talk at all. She was afraid and uncomfortable. But she wanted to help.

  Sybrina reassured Rachel that she would be okay, and that no harm was going to come to her by coming forward and meeting with us.

  Then Sybrina began reading the letter, which was written in a neat cursive script:

  I was on the phone when Trayvon decided to go to the corner store. It started to rain so he decided to walk through another complex because it was raining too hard. He started walking, then noticed someone was following him. Then he decided to find a shortcut ’cause the man wouldn’t follow him. Then he said the man didn’t follow him again. Then he looked back and saw the man again. The man started getting closer, then Trayvon turned around and said, “Why are you following me!!” Then I heard him fall, then the phone hung up. I called back and text. No response. In my mind I thought it was just a fight. Then I found out this tragic story.

  The letter was signed “Diamond Eugene.”

  In the kitchen I could hear Sybrina start to cry, a sound that crushed me every time I heard it. I knew whatever Rachel had told her had brought her back to the night of the killing.

  Rachel left the house, but it was just the beginning of our journey with Rachel Jeantel. Attorney Crump and I called her that evening in a three-way call. The call was recorded, and the next day parts of the call would be broadcast on ABC News—without revealing Rachel’s identity, because we were concerned about identifying her. The show said that she was his “girlfriend,” which wasn’t true, and that she was sixteen, which, again, wasn’t accurate. But what Rachel said in that nighttime phone call, which she took while standing in the closet of a friend’s house she was visiting, speaking over her Bluetooth, was 100 percent true. And the world would hear it on March 20, 2012, on ABC News:

  Trayvon said, “What are you following me for?” And the man said, “What are you doing here?” Next thing I hear is somebody pushing, and somebody pushed Trayvon because the headset just fell. I called him again, and he didn’t answer the phone.

  The line then went dead. Besides screams heard on 911 calls that night as Martin and Zimmerman scuffled, those were the last words he said.

  Trayvon’s phone logs, also obtained exclusively by ABC News, show the conversation occurred five minutes before police first arrived on the scene. Crump said the girl’s identity was being withheld because “her parents are gravely concerned about her health and her safety.” Her parents asked that only an attorney be allowed to ask her questions.

  Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, and mother, Sybrina Fulton, listened to the call, along with ABC News, ashen-faced.

  “He knew he was being followed, and tried to get away from the guy, and the guy still caught up with him,” Tracy Martin said. “And that’s the most disturbing part. He thought he had got away from the guy, and the guy backtracked for him….”

  Sybrina kept Rachel’s letter in her Bible from that day forward. “Because it came from the last person to talk to Trayvon,” she told me. Months later, when Sybrina was called to give a deposition in the case, the prosecutor asked her, “Regarding the letter, did you bring here today the original?”

  She had it in her Bible. Because she brought her Bible everywhere, to all of the important moments in our case for justice for Trayvon, including that deposition. When the defense lawyers were questioning her, Sybrina showed them her Bible with the letter from Rachel Jeantel folded up inside it.

  In that Bible was the truth. Still, the truth was taking a long time to come to light.

  —

  Fittingly, the words that came to summarize our fight for justice came from the mouths of students.

  Our attorney, Jasmine Rand, was also a first-semester law professor at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. Twice a week she left Parks and Crump’s law office and rushed to FAMU’s campus to teach at night. In her very first semester teaching, Jasmine had given the students in her Legal Problems of the Poor class an assignment: to apply what they were learning and provide services to homeless people. But when she got involved in Trayvon’s case, she switched gears. She told her class the basics of our case: “A seventeen-year-old student was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer while walking home with a can of iced tea and a bag of Skittles. We don’t know exactly what happened, but the neighborhood watch volunteer had a gun, Trayvon had Skittles, and he ended up dead and his killer has not even been arrested.

  “You have a new assignment,” she continued. “I am going to teach you how to write press releases and hold press conferences. I am going to teach you how to use the media to forward a social justice issue and be a voice for the voiceless. Trayvon Martin doesn’t have a voice, so now our job is to speak for him. We’re going to hold a press conference outside the courthouse in Sanford.” Class didn’t end until about 9:00 P.M., but the next morning she turned on her BlackBerry to discover that her students had been working throughout the night and had already messaged her a video, in which each student told the story of Trayvon Martin and his shooting in their own voices, becoming his voice beyond the grave and calling for justice.

  Ben Crump had been trying to get a meeting with Norman Wolfinger, the longtime state attorney for the Eighteenth Judicial Circuit Court of Florida. But Wolfinger wouldn’t—or perhaps couldn’t—meet directly with Crump or our family. He agreed to meet with Jasmine Rand, as both a citizen and a professor, along with some of her students. And he agreed to have them meet with his assistant state attorney, Pat Whitaker, at the Seminole County courthouse in Sanford.

  Jasmine and her students wouldn’t just meet with the assistant state attorney; they would hold a press conference outside after their meeting. To prepare for that, Jasmine taught her students how to write a press release, how to develop media sound bites, and how to lead a mini-protest and mini-movement.

  —

  Jasmine got chills and later shared the video with us. When we saw it, we got chills, too. So many young people—fresh, smart, of different nationalities and backgrounds, optimistic and with their lives ahead of them—saying the name of our son and directing that youthful, idealistic energy to his cause. For the first time, we felt that kind of direct connection with people, especially young people, who didn’t just share our pain, but were moved to action, to changing things—that was the beginning of a new feeling for me, the sense that Trayvon’s spirit was still with us, but not just us. His spirit was motivating a movement.

  The day after the video was uploaded, Jasmine took her students to the store, where they bought poster board and markers. That night, in the Parks and Crump law office over pizza and Cokes they made posters. One I remember said “Gun Versus Skittles.” Another said “Justice for Trayvon Martin.” They finished writing the press release to alert the media of their activities and they prepared the sound bites. They pooled their money, rented a car, reserved two hotel rooms, one for male students and one for female students, and drove to Sanford for their meeting with Assistant State Attorney Pat Whitaker, and to hold their press conference to tell local media what the state attorney planned to do in the case of Trayvon’s killer.

  Soon into the hour-long meeting it became apparent to Jasmine Rand and her students that the state attorney still didn’t seem to have any intention to press charges. The assistant state attorney told them that the investigation by the Sanford Police Department was not as thorough as he would have liked, and that the state attorney’s office would launch an investigation that would be “greatly supplemented.” But it was what he didn’t say that concerned Attorney Rand and her students: the state attorney’s investigation seemed to be
centering on whether or not the killer’s self-defense claim could be proven—instead of whether or not charges of manslaughter, or even murder, would be brought. Attorney Rand and her students felt that the state attorneys, who were supposed to represent the people, still seemed to be on the side of Trayvon’s killer. Later, she told us and the legal team that you can’t always place a finger on racism, but she and her students felt that the way the state attorney received them and communicated with them led them to think that Trayvon’s race was the unspoken X factor in the decision that was already apparent: he had no intention of arresting George Zimmerman.

  Attorney Rand and her students were frustrated when they left the meeting, but she pulled them into a private room before they emerged from the courthouse to meet the media. She reminded them that despite what the state attorney just said or how he treated them, they had the ability to walk out of the courthouse and become a voice for Trayvon and advocates for change. Channeling frustration into passion for justice, her students were ready to be our voice in the media. When they emerged from the courthouse, there were around seventy-five other protesters gathered along with the media, singing “We Shall Overcome” and chanting for an immediate arrest.

  Jasmine spoke first, then passed the microphone off to her students.

  “Are we satisfied? No,” said one student of the meeting with the assistant state attorney. “We appreciate the gesture.”

  “It seems all the people are on Trayvon’s side,” said another. “The government is on [the killer’s] side.”

  “This is not acceptable,” said another student. “There was a time when this was acceptable. That time is not now.”

  One student, Kendra Neal, said, “He had dreams like we did. But because of this travesty, we’ll never know what great successes he would have shared with the world.”

  After each student expressed their thoughts, they repeated slogans from their posters:

  What happened to him could happen to anyone.

  No justice for Trayvon, no peace for Sanford.

  My skin is not my sin.

  Finally, one of the students said: “I am Trayvon Martin.” I am Trayvon Martin, a phrase that became a rallying cry for people united to fight for justice for our son.

  Even in all this darkness, with the screams from those death tapes still echoing in my mind, a light appeared, the possibility that there was some salvation in all of this pain. In the voices of these young people, we began to hear a redemption song for Trayvon that would spread to languages and countries around the world.

  “I am Trayvon Martin.”

  My son’s spirit lived.

  —

  If the local authorities weren’t interested in pursuing charges against the killer of our son, we thought maybe a higher authority would help, and our attorneys began to petition the FBI to step in. By March 21, the FBI and the US Justice Department announced they were investigating Trayvon’s death and sending officials to Sanford “to address tension in the community.”

  A meeting was scheduled between the FBI, members of the U.S. Department of Justice, and us.

  Attorney Daryl Parks drove us to the FBI’s field office near Orlando, in his rental car. It was the first time we’d met Parks, Crump’s partner, who heads the Parks and Crump office. Parks had done some civil rights work in the past, but he said a lawyer would “die trying to do this work exclusively.” So when we first signed on with his firm, he was out helping other clients in less controversial circumstances. Eventually, however, he decided he needed to get involved and lend a hand—the case was turning into something larger than any one or two people could handle. We needed a team of attorneys, and we were lucky to have them led by Crump and his partner, Daryl Parks.

  Their young associate Jasmine Rand was right when she told us in the beginning that Parks and Crump would fight harder than anybody to have the man who killed our son arrested.

  The moment we met Daryl Parks we immediately knew why he and Benjamin Crump had been such a successful team. We also knew we had the best lawyers to find justice for our son. They met as undergraduates at Florida A&M in Tallahassee, where Parks was the president of the student body and Crump was president of the Black Student Union. They ended up at the Florida State University College of Law together, and there they became fast friends and, as legend has it, printed their Parks & Crump business cards before they even graduated.

  When they first began practicing law they couldn’t afford money for hotels, so if they had court appearances out of town they slept on the sofas of friends and relatives. Neither came from a wealthy family; both were first-generation college students; both had the drive and ingenuity that only struggle can bestow. As Parks and Crump fought tirelessly for their clients in courtrooms across the state, word of the “dynamic duo” and their success spread.

  Along with their success in the courtroom came financial success. But Parks and Crump didn’t keep the money for themselves; they immediately began giving back to their community, funding scholarships and hosting community events in the beautiful building they purchased in downtown Tallahassee.

  By the time we met them, Parks & Crump was more than a law firm; it was a family, and we were lucky to become part of it. Our attorneys—Parks, Crump, Natalie Jackson, and Jasmine Rand—all believed they could make the world a more just place for people like my son. And while they all shared the same vision, Attorney Parks’s role was more practical. As the firm’s managing partner, he oversaw the legal team. Before major events in our case, and before each court session, we all prayed together. In between, we shared meals together, stayed in the same hotel together. As our bond and love for one another grew, so too did our strength to fight together for Trayvon.

  From the moment we met him, Daryl Parks was with us, literally by our side and at our backs, every step of the way. Driving us, counseling us, crying with us, praying with us, staying in hotel rooms down the hallway from us, and guiding us through a legal process that we didn’t know anything about.

  “The feds play their cards close to their vest,” Parks told us on the drive up. “They know everything that’s going on, but they don’t tell you everything. They invite you to a meeting and you don’t necessarily know who is going to be there.”

  We met the rest of our legal team outside the building: Ben Crump and Natalie Jackson.

  We walked inside. When we found the right conference room, I counted at least eighteen feds, including officials from the U.S. Department of Justice, local FBI agents, and a number of armed officers. I didn’t know what to make of such a large, intimidating crowd. Were they here to help?

  We were told that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was going to launch an investigation into what happened the night that Trayvon was killed. We were assured that the federal government was closely watching the case, and would provide whatever resources it had available. They didn’t think there was much that could be done from a civil rights standpoint, but if something was found during their investigation they would do all they could to pursue it.

  We could feel the weight of the federal government examining the death of our son, and we left the meeting feeling hopeful. But Crump and Parks said we couldn’t afford to relax. We had to keep applying the pressure.

  —

  At some point during this period, I was walking with Sybrina and our attorneys into Logan’s Roadhouse, a casual restaurant in Sanford, when we all started receiving calls, texts, and emails: “Chief Bill Lee stepped down!” He’d only been on the job for ten months, said he was now “temporarily stepping aside” after a three-to-two no-confidence vote by the Sanford City Commission.

  Later that day, we watched the chief’s press conference on television—he was standing behind a lectern surrounded by the media. He wore his uniform, with his big brass badge on his chest and four golden stars on his collar, surrounded by microphones, cameras, and reporters in front of the Sanford Police Department, preparing to do what would have been unthinkable less than a
month ago, when we were strangers to Sanford: leave the police department because of the shooting of my son.

  “My role as the leader of this agency has become a distraction from the investigation,” the chief told the media that day. “While I stand by the Sanford Police Department, its personnel, and the investigation that was conducted in regards to the Trayvon Martin case, it is apparent that my involvement in this matter is overshadowing the process. Therefore, I have come to the decision that I must temporarily remove myself from the position as police chief for the City of Sanford. I do this in hopes of restoring some semblance of calm to the city, which has been in turmoil for several weeks.”

  Later that night, the television was filled with commentary on the chief’s resignation. Once again, we weren’t sure what to make of the news. But we knew it was the first crack in the Sanford Police Department’s wall—the first time they acknowledged that there might be a problem with its investigation.

  Crump, as always, rallied us all to use the event to raise the stakes and bring the media heat to a boil. His strategy was always to be relentless, to spot a weakness and exploit it, to find your talking point and drill it over and over and over again. Sybrina and I both went on local news shows the next day. I said that we needed a “permanent solution,” not a temporary removal. We needed the immediate arrest of the killer of our son and a full investigation into the Sanford Police Department.

  “[I] just felt like the Sanford police department decided on the scene to be judge and jury,” Sybrina would say on the Today show, where she and I were interviewed side by side with Crump. Earlier she had said, “I just want this guy arrested so he can be brought to justice.”

  As I had said before, “We aren’t looking for revenge, we’re looking for justice—the same justice anyone would expect if their son were shot and killed for no reason.”