Stand Your Ground: Florida’s Coon* Hunting Law
Trayvon Martin stepped out of his father’s gated community
To purchase Skittles and a bottle of Arizona Tea
On the way home stalked by George Zimmerman we see
A self-appointed local vigilante
Armed we learned with his trusty 9 mil
Looking for a Coon to kill
The 911 calls reveal the yelps
Of a young man crying for help
He contacts a friend and on his cell phone talks
Informing her he is being stalked
But thinks he has the big white man eluded
Unfortunately for Trayvon he was deluded
His friend hears his cries on the phone
A shot rings out—he dies alone
And Trayvon no longer responds to the ring
Victim of another Southern racial thing
Trayvon’s body is taken to the morgue and listed as a John Doe
With a stark label attached to his great toe
They have his cell phone but here’s their sin
They do not contact the next of kin
But wait days until they respond to the family’s missing person’s report
And the family learns the awful truth that he was hunted down and shot for sport
For in Florida you can stand your ground—code for shooting first
And claim you feared for your life –and here is what’s the worst
How can a young black man carrying the Skittles and ice tea they found
Represent any threat to a big white man outweighing the kid by 80 pounds?
No– on the face of things it certainly seems to me
This law allows for racial killing with impunity.
Howard P. Charman, MD 3-20-2012 and UPDATED 7-26-2020
Although not necessarily politically correct it is used on purpose. Southern racism has always been vicious to black men who have been regularly beaten, deprived of knowledge and systematically abused by slave patrols and, if rebellious sent to a “nigger breaker”* e.g. Covey at Mt. Misery to be brutally whipped into submission as was Frederick Douglas. (Douglas ended up physically besting Covey who let it slide as he did not want the information out). Black men were regularly lynched. White men were protected by the system and had absolute impunity. Black women had no control of their bodies and were regularly raped, and the products of those abuses sold as the plantation owner’s “increase”. The first white man convicted of raping a black women occurred in 1970. This is well documented in Ned and Constance Sublette’s book The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry. Stand your ground laws are a disgusting sequalae of slavery. The title is historically accurate and highlights an aspect of a brutal system.