The fiancée of an unarmed man gunned down by police is reaching out to the parents of Trayvon Martin.
Nicole Paultre Bell has penned a letter to the parents of the unarmed teen who was shot and killed by neighborhood watch wvolunteer George Zimmerman.
Like Martin, her husband-to-be, Sean Bell, was unarmed when he was shot by authorities in a hail of bullets the night before his wedding. In a heartfelt letter posted on The Grio, Bell offers Trayvon’s parents words of encouragement and praises them for fighting racial injustice, a move Dr. Martin Luther King would be proud of.
“As the great Dr. Martin Luther King wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice. If one recognizes this vital urge that has engulfed the Negro community, one should readily understand why public demonstrations are taking place. The Negro has many pent-up resentments and latent frustrations, and he must release them. So let him march; let him make prayer pilgrimages to the city hall. If his repressed emotions are not released in nonviolent ways, they will seek expression through violence; this is not a threat but a fact of history.”
I must believe the above paragraph — it is what gets me through the day, especially when I look down at my two little girls. One of which doesn’t know her father personally, although when his picture comes on the television she yells out “Daddy.”It is truly a living nightmare to see another innocent young man’s life senselessly taken away over his demeanor. It leads me to one question only, how far have we really come since Dr. King’s speech, on the steps of the Lincoln memorial in 1963?
This injustice continues to plague our country almost 5 decades later, but it must stop now. The question you might want to ask yourselves is how can I help to diminish these tragedies? The answer is you have already begun. Your voices are being heard all across this nation as peacemakers. People are standing up for Trayvon because they feel your pain, and understand that this could easily have been their son, husband, father, brother, cousin or nephew and we are out right tired of it. Please don’t give up the fight for the pursuit of justice …”
Nicole Paultre Bell also made sure to add that Trayvon Martin did not die in vain.
Bell’s letter in full is available on TheGrio.com.
