By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
ILWU Hosts 2nd Annual Walk the Coast Event for Cancer p. 5
Longshore Workers Fight PMA and Zenith to Pay Claims Quicker p. 7
Sean Lane Talks Authentic Blues p. 11
July - 26 - August 8, 2013
A New Civil Rights Movement? / to p. 22
The Local Publication You Actually Read
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hite America marks the start of the modern civil rights movement with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which began on Dec 1, 1955. For Black America, the spark came a few months earlier with the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till on Aug. 28, Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon Martin’s 1955 in Mississippi and his mother’s mother speaks at a rally held in decision to have an open casket funeral. her son’s name. His body was viewed by tens of thousands of mourners both in the mortuary and at his funeral in Chicago, with photographs and news reports spread around the world. More than 500 African-Americans had been lynched or similarly killed in Mississippi alone since the 1870s, but Till’s murder, framed by his mother’s fearless and dignified response, proved to be unlike any other. A similar fate has met numerous young black men in recent years—Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell and Oscar Grant are among the handful whose deaths have drawn wide notice out of so many others. But now, the murder of Trayvon Martin, similarly framed by both his parents’ responses, just might, potentially, have an effect similar to Till’s, though it’s still too early to tell. “Trayvon Martin will forever remain in the annals of history next to Medgar Evers and Emmett Till as symbols for the fight for equal justice for all,” Martin family attorney Benjamin Crump said the evening after Martin’s killer was acquitted. One week later, “Justice for Trayvon” rallies were held in over 100 cities
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