The Street Outside Of Trayvon Martin’s High School Is Being Renamed After Him

Eight years have passed since the shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin. The Black 17-year-old was fatally shot in Sanford, Florida one evening on February 26, by George Zimmerman while walking home alone from a nearby convenience store. Martin’s death sparked nationwide rallies and protests and a month after his death hundreds of students at his high school took part in a walkout to support him.

Now, nearly a decade after his death, Martin’s legacy is set to be memorialized with a street named after him.

Earlier this week, officials in Miami-Dade County passed a resolution to rename a portion of a street outside of the murdered teen’s Miami, Florida high school after him.

Trayvon Martin Avenue will make up a portion of 16th Avenue from Ives Dairy Road to 209th Street. The street resides outside of Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School where Martin was enrolled during the time of his death. It will now be named in his honor.

Martin was murdered back in February 2012 by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman after an altercation in which details remain murky. At the time, Zimmerman claimed he shot at Martin out of self-defense after fearing for his life. Martin was found unarmed.

After being charged with second-degree murder, Zimmerman was acquitted on July 13, 2013.

The Oct. 6 memorandum calling to make the roadway name change described Martin as “beloved by his family, friends, and other members of his community.”

Government officials pointed out in the memorandum that Martin’s death was a massive catalyst in the conversation around ongoing racial injustice and the creation of the Black Lives Matter Movement.

“Although Trayvon Martin’s life was tragically cut short, his death elicited national conversations about race relations, racial profiling, gun rights, and stand your ground laws and was a catalyst that set nationwide demands for social justice reforms in motion,” the memorandum explained.

“In July 2013, in response to the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s
killer, #BlackLivesMatter (“Black Lives Matter”), was first used as a social media hashtag and later evolved into a global political movement dedicated to protesting police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people, as well as other social justice reforms; and WHEREAS, Trayvon Martin’s tragic demise was also the impetus for the creation of the
Trayvon Martin Foundation (“Foundation”); and… Black Lives Matter and the Foundation were both founded as a direct result of Trayvon Martin’s death and provided a means for people across the world to voice their opinions and channel their anguish as they grappled with the murder of an unarmed child who was returning home with a drink and candy that he purchased from a convenience store,” a portion of the memorandum reads.

Martin’s family and friends have worked tirelessly to advocate for racial justice and stricter gun control in the years after his death.

In 2018, Paramount Network released the Rest in Power docuseries that documented the shooting of Martin and examined the unrest that was brought about across the country as a result. Trayvon’s mother Sybrina Fulton said at the time that she wanted the series to “show the love that two parents had for Trayvon, and this will tell people who he was… We want to make sure that other families don’t go through what we went through. We miss him every day.”

Fulton has spent the years after her son’s death advocating for stricter gun control. She started both the Trayvon Martin Foundation and Circle of Mothers which works to unite and empower parents of children whose lives have been lost to gun violence.