As a crowd estimated to be around 1,000 people gathered in Sanford on Saturday demanding the arrest of Neighborhood Watch volunteer George Zimmerman in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, two smaller rallies took place in St. Petersburg to call for that same action.
Shortly before 11:00 a.m. across the street from the Poynter Institute on Third Street South, approximately 100 people began marching north towards downtown in a rally led by veteran civil rights activist Sevell Brown with the National Christian League of Councils.
Brown said Trayvon Martin's death has mobilized more moral outrage regarding the death of a black teenage since Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman.
"It demonstrates that all these years later, even with a black president, you still have pervasive racism, pervasive cultural biases and people who are locked into that warped zone," Brown said moments before the march began, ultimately concluding at Spa Beach Park.
This article appears in Mar 29 – Apr 4, 2012.