Allan Appel Photo
Spellman classmates Aimee Pierre & Joy DeYounge raised hoods to remember Trayvon Martin at Community Baptist.
The reverend wore a black hoodie. On either side of his cruciform lectern stood a small package of Skittles and a tall can of iced tea.
Reverend J. Lawrence Turner deployed these unusual symbols as he led an overflow crowd of 200 hoodie-wearing congregants at Community Baptist Church in Newhallville.
It was a Sunday of Christian worship whose purpose was to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. The Newhallville service was one of many across the country to memorialize the 17-year-old Florida teenager, who was gunned down by a block watch captain in alleged self-defense. Martin carried no weapon. He was wearing a hooded sweatshirt and carrying only Skittles, iced tea, and a cell phone. His case has sparked nationwide outrage and calls for Florida police to reverse themselves and arrest the shooter.
Rev. Turner said justice would be not only the arrest of George Zimmerman but profound changes in society.
Video images of a hoodied Martin played above Turner Sunday. Above that a painted banner unfurled reading “God is Love.” Turner asked his congregants, who had been texted en masse to wear sweatshirts, to stand and to raise their hoods in a moment of silent remembrance.
“It is more important to discover the ‘what’ that killed him, not the ‘who,’” Turner said. He asserted that in a deeper sense the tragic death had little to do with hoodies: “Malcolm and Martin were shot, and they had on suits.”
As inspirational rhythms from a sextet filled the sanctuary, Turner termed the deaths of so many young people, whether occasioned by racial profiling or black-on-black crime, as the genocide of a generation. “These are not a liability. We are going to protect them. They are [not going to be lost to violence but are] going to return to this altar to marry,” he declared as young people gathered around him.
Turner’s sermon then likened the teen’s death to the Massacre of the Innocents recounted in chapter two of The Gospel of Matthew. In that story an insecure Herod declares death for all the babies in Bethlehem who might threaten him.
“Could it be this nation is afraid of Trayvon’s promise?” Turner asked.
He said what killed Martin was an abuse of power stretching from the shooter George Zimmerman to the lawmakers who have passed “stand-your-ground” legislation in 20 states. In a deeper sense, he added, “Trayvon Martin’s tragic death shows America’s soul is absent justice.”
Turner said if you could secretly listen in on the boardrooms and power centers of America, you could hear people saying that young African-American males are more profitable to the country either in cemeteries or in prison than in being allowed to fulfill their potential.
Former New Haven police Officer Gerri Leak.
Such dramatic words were not lost on Gerri Leak (pictured), who attended the Community Baptist service with two of her daughters and seven grandchildren, three of whom she is raising herself in North Haven.
Back in 1973 she was briefly a cop in New Haven. To this day she says that she and her family are followed by the police, whether they are wearing hoodies or plain caps. “It’s stereotyping,” she said.
With other members of the church she said she is joining in a letter-writing campaign to President Obama to get guns off the street and an online petition by Trayvon Martin’s parents.