Dishonoring the Memory of Emmett Till

Emmett Till was killed by vigilantes for talking to a white woman, perhaps a little saucily. Trayvon Martin was shot by a man whose head he was pounding into the pavement.

Whatever Zimmerman may have been guilty of, Trayvon Martin is not a new Emmett Till.

There is a long and terrible history of white vigilantes executing blacks in this country. One arena in which that history had to be irrelevant was in George Zimmerman's trial: Zimmerman could only be tried for what he did, not for a whole history of terrible incidents in which he played no part.