Before slain 17-year-old Trayvon Martin became the symbol of a movement, he was a Florida teenager who loved Air Jordans and planes and could “fix anything,” his mother, Sybrina Fulton, wrote in “Rest in Power: The Enduring Life of Trayvon Martin.”
“The nickname that he had for me was ‘Cupcake,’” Fulton told “Into America’s” Trymaine Lee. “I would be the damsel in distress, and he would come to the rescue. ... He was a mama’s boy.”
Such details about Martin’s personhood have often been lost in conversations about his legacy in the decade since he was killed on Feb. 26, 2012. In the years that followed, his family established a foundation in his name, supporters held the “Million Hoodie March,” and the Black Lives Matter movement was born as a reaction to George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the killing. But Fulton said she never wanted any of it.
“I didn’t pray to become the mother of a movement. I was happy being the mother of Trayvon Martin and Jahvaris Fulton,” Fulton wrote in an essay about the family’s journey after Martin’s death, “Trayvon: Ten Years Later.” “I became the mother of a movement out of necessity.”
Fulton and Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, have repeatedly spoken about the attacks on their son’s character. In the months after Martin’s death, media outlets reported on school suspensions, photos of Martin smoking and text messages that cast him in a negative light. Fulton told reporters then, “They killed my son, and now they’re trying to kill his reputation.”
His parents describe him instead as an adventurous kid who had a special relationship with both of them. A well-known photo shows Tracy hugging his son with one arm and kissing him on the cheek. The two look happy, with Trayvon sporting a subtle smirk. Tracy told Lee the photo was taken during one of the family’s many holiday parties. “I just hugged him and gave him a kiss. Like, ‘your dad loves you.’ ... But that wasn’t a once-in-a-lifetime moment,” he said, adding that those tender moments happened “all the time.”
The family was big on experiences. They went skiing and snowboarding, took trips to different cities and went horseback riding.
Martin was exposed to a lot of things, and as a child, he gave himself fully to whatever activity he was interested in at the time, Fulton wrote in “Rest in Power.” Learning to ride a bike wasn’t enough for Martin — he built a ramp to ride as fast and fly as high as he could. He loved playing football and basketball and wrestling. And when his time in his football junior league was over, he still found ways to spend time at the park where the kids would play.
“He worked at the concession stand with his father, who ran it, but he also worked with the younger kids at the park, making sure they had their uniforms, helping them get on the field on time, and doing whatever else he could, until I had to say, ‘Trayvon, we have to go home now!’” Fulton recalled in the book.
Martin’s next love would be airplanes. He took an aviation course one summer at Experience Aviation in Miami, founded by Barrington Irving, the first Black person to fly around the world solo in 2007. The next year, at 13, Martin attended an aviation school and quickly learned the ropes. In an interview with Esquire, Tracy recalled picking Martin up from the school one day and finding him sitting in a simulator. He had learned to land a plane.
Martin decided on a career in aviation. But he didn’t know whether he’d want to work as a mechanic or as a pilot. He simply wanted “to be around planes,” Fulton recalled in “Rest in Power.” A photo from Martin’s time studying aviation shows him sporting a smile and an excited expression. (Florida Memorial University would give Martin a posthumous bachelor of science degree in aviation.)
By the time he was 17, Martin was like any other teenager, always listening to music on his iPod and talking to girls. It’s also when he became focused on his personal style. He worked odd jobs to pay for the newest Air Jordans and expensive cologne. Then he bought a single hoodie, wearing it often to make a “fashion statement,” Fulton wrote. She didn’t know then what that item of clothing would come to symbolize.
Martin was wearing the hoodie and carrying a pack of Skittles and an iced tea on Feb. 26, 2012, when Zimmerman, then a neighborhood watch volunteer, shot and killed him in Sanford. Today, the hoodie is part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Fulton told Lee that it took her years to muster the strength to donate her son’s personal items — the hoodie, his pants and his sneakers — to the museum for the exhibit.
“They were all in a box, and it was marked ‘evidence,’” Fulton said. “I was like, I have to keep these things forever and ever. Well, how was I going to do that? Because once I pass away, who’s going to keep the box? ... How can I make sure that this is actually a part of history?
“That’s why I decided to donate the thing. I gave America Trayvon. I wanted everybody to see that if you looked at the hoodie, you saw a hole in his chest, you know, where his heart was, where he was shot at. I want people to see that.”
Additional reporting by Trymaine Lee.Follow NBCBLK on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.