Connecting the Dots: Rodney King and Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin - the African American boy who was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer for Trayvon Martin - the African American boy who was shot by a neighborhood watch volunteer for "looking suspicious". Fifty years after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech inspired the nation to tolerance and mutual understanding, feelings of suspicion and distrust still flare up between blacks and whites across the USA.

They again caught fire after the suspicious shooting of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teen, in Florida in 2012.

To many, this event seemed to echo the same kind of injustice suffered twenty years earlier when black man Rodney King was beaten by white police officers in Los Angeles. This was caught on tape and broadcast on television.

Read more in Access to English: Social Studies, pp. 412-413. Then do the tasks in the textbook and on this website.