I am disgusted by this travesty because I thought the days of outright murder of people who look
like me had long since passed. My Grandfather told me that while growing up in West Texas, he had to keep his eyes cast down and step off the sidewalk if someone white was coming towards him' about the "Sundown Laws and signs. My Grandmother told me about the time when in 1938, she'd just put my newborn uncle down for a nap. The little house they lived in was on a hill and she smelled smoke. She looked out the window to see an old white farmer scowling at the house, with a burning torch in his hand and realised that he'd tried to set the house on fire with she and the baby in it! My Uncle told me on the evening of Obama's first election that he NEVER thought he'd see this day because while growing up South Carolina had he tried to vote, he would have LITERALLY been taking his life into his hands.
My mother told me about the time when she was a teen Cheerleader, she was in Norman Oklahoma for a Cheerleading camp. She was in a store with her friends looking for various sundries when she noticed a little girl, about 4 years old, following her. After 20 minutes of being followed, she asked the child what what she was looking for. This girl replied, "I'm looking for YOUR TAIL my mommy told me you people have"....My mother was mortified and told her, "Honey, I don't have a tail", just as her mother came around the corner looking for her. The woman turned all kinds of red when my mother said, with her sweetest smile, "So, you mommy told you that people like me have tails?"
I have been called "n*gger" to my face many time but only once in the last 10 years. Given I live in California but idiots are EVERYWHERE. Even though this has happened, there are FAR MORE DECENT FOLKS than aren't. I think that too many of us became complacent and thought that the worst was behind us but a hydra has MANY heads. So, we can mourn the death of the America we thought we had, lick our wounds and understand that Trayvon ais the most innocent of martyrs, lock arms, put our heads down and start to push back this tide of hate, fear, lies and paranoia. America is a dream that belongs to all of us but she's amother that doesn't love all of her children equally. Some of us have to work to be treated equally because some of us are offended by the very existence of people like me, (Black & female). This, my American family is the battle cry because there are more of us than there are of them.
That murderer is laughing and celebrating right now but to what I've been hearing through the Grapevine, he's dead man walking. He's emboldened and it's just a matter of time before he frightens someone else who get's the draw on his fat ass and makes the world a better place. Think of that baby as a rallying cry, lets pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and make a plan that we won't be pushed ONE MORE INCH!
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Push back the tide of hate...and we will 
