What is “Justice For Trayvon?”
In an article about Jada Williams at the American Thinker, Matthew May makes a good point. We’ve heard of Sandra Fluke and Trayvon Martin, but many fewer in this country have ever heard of Jada Williams.
For those who don’t know, Jada Williams is a 13-year-old girl in Rochester, NY who read the first autobiography by Frederick Douglass and related to it in regards to her personal educational situation in the Rochester City School District. Jada referenced the scene in the book where the slave master of Frederick Douglass caught his wife teaching Douglass to read and said: “If you teach that nigger (speaking of [Douglass]) how to read, there will be no keeping him. It will forever unfit him to be a slave.”
She then noted that many of her fellow inner-city classmates don’t know how to read, almost to the extent that it’s as if the educational system is trying to make sure that they aren’t even motivated to learn how to read. In response, she made a call to action: “To my peers, people of color, and my generation… I encourage my people to not just be a student, but become a learner.” He radical idea that inner-city minority students should learn to read was too radical. She and her parents were then persistently persecuted and harassed by her teachers and administrators into actually leaving the school. Only after months of battling was she able to get back in school, but not without faked low grades on her permanent record that the school so far has refused to show proof that she even deserved.
But President Obama has not yet spoken up for her, even though, if he had a third daughter, she might actually look like Jada. As well, his administration surely knows of Jada’s story. It has been covered to some extent by his favorite liberal media outlet, the Huffington Post, in a piece titled “Jada Williams, Student, Allegedly Harassed for Award-Winning Essay Comparing School to Modern Slavery.” Notice though, the liberal media doesn’t quite believe the story, in that they use the word “allegedly” to describe it. It must not inspire the actions that would most benefit the Obama administration.
However, when Sandra Fluke was used as a pawn by the Democrats in Congress at a faked conference and mocked for it, President Obama called her up personally and told her that her parents should be proud. She publically claimed that, as a law student at Catholic Georgetown University paying $50,000 a year, she needs to have a lot of pre-marital sex just to keep her head straight. And because it costs nearly $1,000 a year to make sure she’s not, as President Obama would say “punished with a baby,” she demanded that her Catholic University cover the cost of keeping her un-pregnant. For this, President Obama personally called this Public Princess of Promiscuity to tell her that her parents should be proud.
With this recognition, President Obama made her a “hero” whom he hoped would inspire others to make these same demands of religious institutions and of the government-regulated insurance companies. He wants people to demand that someone pay for the abortion drugs to kill unborn babies in the womb. And when those people are black, he is hoping that black people will demand the coverage of drugs used to kill black babies in the womb. I guess those are the actions the Obama administration would like to inspire.
Another hero that President Obama publically acknowledged is Trayvon Martin. He was tragically shot to death after a physical altercation with a local neighborhood watch captain. President Obama said, “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon.” This was a dog-whistle message to race baiters like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the New Black Panther Party that he thought that this was a racially motivated killing. With that kind of approval, the racial hucksters have stirred up the passions in minorities. The New Black Panther Party has even put a bounty on the head of Trayvon’s killer. President Obama did not once condemn that lawless act, but his Attorney General has indeed praised Al Sharpton’s efforts to gin up racial tensions.
As a result of the racial animosity that is being created here, black folks are rising up and committing crimes in Trayvon’s name against white people for almost no other reason than that they’re white. This is happening, even though three news networks have admitted that they inaccurately reported on this story, so as to make it sound as though Trayvon’s killing was indeed racially motivated.
NBC fired some editors who purposely edited Zimmerman’s call to 911 to make it sound as though he was focused on Trayvon Martin because he was black. NBC purposely edited out the 911-dispatcher’s question about whether the suspect was white, black or Hispanic. Zimmerman only mentioned Trayvon’s race because he was asked to do so. ABC admitted that they used unenhanced film footage to indicate that Zimmerman’s head was not cut up, but enhancing the video later proved that the cuts were indeed there. Photos released afterwards even showed that his head was covered in blood streaming from those cuts. CNN later enhanced the audio that they claimed contained a racial slur by Zimmerman, only to discover he was talking about the coldness. And to make this sound even more like a hate crime, many in the media claimed that George Zimmerman, who is half-Hispanic with black ancestors, was from a newly created oppressor class they called “white-Hispanic.”
With these facts coming out, we should allow the justice system to determine George Zimmerman’s fate and not seek revenge. As more and more information comes out about that night, it becomes more apparent that this terrible incident wasn’t motivated by race. Those that are honest with themselves will find it nearly impossible to think that George Zimmerman woke up that morning with the intent to kill a man because he’s black. It’s hard to imagine that there was anything pre-meditated about his unfortunate actions, which he surely wishes he could take back.
This was a tragic incident with a finality that we all must mourn without making it worse by seeking racial justice in the form of violence. Unfortunately, racial violence is happening. There have been several recent incidents where black people have been attacking white people and claiming that it is being done as “justice for Trayvon.” Furthermore, this declaration is an admission that these crimes are indeed pre-meditated.
Is this really “Justice for Trayvon?” Trayvon Martin’s parents have already said that they do not want violence to be committed in the name of their son. And this is an important request from the family. They do not want violence done in the name of their dead child. What parent would?
So we at the Frederick Douglass Foundation would like to applaud the family of Trayvon Martin for this sober request, especially at such an awful time for their family. We would also like to second that request and point out that violations of this request are in direct violation of the wishes of our abolitionist heroes who helped end slavery in this nation and of the wishes of our 20th Century Civil Rights heroes.
Frederick Douglass was a slave, but because he learned to read and reason, as a free man, he was the statesman who was President Lincoln’s main advisor behind the decision to risk civil war in order to free the slaves. And once the slaves had been freed, Frederick Douglass did not call for revenge. He was a Christian who had this to say:
I loved all mankind, slaveholder not excepted, though I abhorred slavery more than ever. I saw the world in a new light… I gathered scattered pages of the Bible from the filthy street gutters, and washed and dried them, that in moments of leisure I might get a word or two of wisdom from them.
With the ability to read and reason, he earned the respect and the attentive ear of perhaps the most beloved President of the United States. And it was because of his reason and intellect that this president did what made him the greatest president in our nation’s history. He risked everything, including the Union of the States, in order to emancipate the slaves. Frederick Douglass earned this respect, and, unlike the President Obama-approved hero Sandra Fluke, he didn’t assume he was entitled to it.
Likewise, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t consider himself entitled to the respect of the white man. He earned it with his reason, his intellect and his fervent faith in God. At an address in Montgomery, AL on New Years Eve of 1955, he said:
If you will protest courageously, and yet with dignity and Christian love, when the history books are written in the future generations, the historians will have to pause and say, “There lived a great people - a black people - who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.”
When violence is committed in the name of Trayvon Martin, its perpetrators are spitting on the memory of the great men responsible for the black man’s freedom and for the promotion of his equality as written in the laws of man. This violence, in the name of racial disunity, is not going to make the black man more equal. Nor will it inspire future historians to remember this generation as part of the “great people… who injected new meaning and dignity into the veins of civilization.”
Romans 12:19: “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I will repay, saith the lord.” Frederick Douglass and Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood this. Their faith in God and in God’s word will make them eternally beloved.
But those that tarnish Trayvon’s memory by smearing it with violence in his name make him an anti-hero. Heroes like Frederick Douglass, Martin Luther King and Jada Williams inspire us to do great things. A hero that inspires us to commit racially motivated crimes in his name is no hero at all. So if you choose to honor the life of Trayvon Martin and to honor his family, do not seek revenge. Instead, seek knowledge as Jada Williams, a hero whom President Obama has not yet recognized, declares we should. With knowledge, reason and faith, we will forever remain unfit as slaves, and we will get the respect and honor that God has promised us.
Timothy F. Johnson, Ph.d.
President and Founder
The Frederick Douglass Foundation
Loved and Hated, But Never Ignored










Confederate Generals Joseph E. Johnston and Kirby Smith, the capture of President Jefferson Davis and understood the Civil War had indeed ended. 8 Even after the surrender of the CSS Shanendoah on Monday, November 6th, 1865 in Liverpool, the war raged on in the hearts and minds of the people. Even now it is difficult to know if the North and the South ever forgave one another. 9
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” — President Abraham Lincoln, the conclusion of Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address Saturday, March 4th, 1865 10
In li
In my opinion, a root cause analysis (RCA) of our decline as a country blessed by God will reveal our departure from biblically based precepts. If “righteousness exalts a nation” and if “sin is a disgrace to any people” (Proverbs 14:34) 13 then for America to survive she must follow the biblical blueprint and build a moral foundation “precept upon precept” and even then “line upon line” (Isaiah 28:10). 14 Because there is such a thing as too late (Jeremiah 13:16). 15 Because life matters (John 10:10) and only works well one way (John 14:6). 16 Because our God is a just God (Isaiah 45:21). 17 It’s past time we stop pursuing personal agendas, recognize that our amoral praetorian policies are at the heart of our problems and work boldly as the “Body of Christ” to “bind up the nation’s wounds.”





