Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin's Death Still Fuels a Movement 5 Years Later: Analysis

"We can't stop," Tracy Martin, Trayvon's father said at the time. "If we stop, the world will stop. We've got to keep fighting"

It has been five years since Trayvon Martin's death on February 26, 2012. And yet the seeds of the movement sewn in those early, tumultuous days, continue to grow.

"We can't stop," Tracy Martin, Trayvon's father said at the time. "If we stop, the world will stop. We've got to keep fighting."

In Martin's death, a movement was born.

Many of the young people who took to the streets in those early days, in some cases by the thousands, had never participated in any form of protest before.

For the five-year anniversary of Trayvon Martin's death, his parents released a book they co-authored, "Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin."

Trayvon Martin's name has been written in textbooks. Legal and political scholars have studied his case. President Barack Obama, who from the Rose Garden a month after the shooting told the world "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon," further immortalized the teen's name.

In death, Trayvon Martin remains a specter of both pain and promise for a generation of young people who came of age in the shadow of his death and who boldly and fiercely proclaim that Black Lives Matter.

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