Under a blazing Florida sun in April 2012, Andrew Thomas went for a drive. He headed 40 miles northeast from Sanford, near Orlando, toward Daytona Beach, a getaway well known for its race track and white sands. But this was no vacation. Mr. Thomas, then a project manager for the city of Sanford, was looking for the Dream Defenders. The group of some 30 young adults had just begun a three-day march in support of Trayvon Martin, a Black 17-year old whose killing in Sanford had rocked the nation.
When he found them, Mr. Thomas asked why they were marching. He knew they sought the arrest of George Zimmerman, who had fatally shot Trayvon six weeks prior. But he also wanted to know: “How do we work this out?”
That sentiment undergirds how Sanford has striven to recover from the turmoil that engulfed the city after Trayvon’s killing. That March, this small Orlando suburb faced protests the likes of which it had never seen. Thousands of people – including famed civil rights activists such as the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton – packed the streets to demand Mr. Zimmerman’s arrest. Those protests quickly spread nationwide, shining a light on Americans’ deep divisions on issues of race, and giving birth to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Why We Wrote This
Trayvon Martin’s killing launched the movement that became Black Lives Matter. Whether the protests have brought lasting reforms to the U.S. remains an open question. But in Sanford, Florida, change has taken root. Part of a series.
Whether that crusade has led to meaningful change in the United States as a whole remains a difficult question to answer. Recently, President Donald Trump has rolled back federal efforts to promote diversity and combat racism, and many corporations have pulled the plug on racial justice initiatives. Communities throughout the country can point to changes – only some of them lasting.
But in the movement’s birthplace, the seeds of reform appear to have taken root.
“The shooting of Trayvon Martin is a chapter in our book, but it is not the book,” says Norton Bonaparte Jr., Sanford’s longtime city manager, quoting late former Mayor Jeff Triplett. Mr. Bonaparte likens the history of race relations in the city to a wound left unhealed. “We are now making efforts to heal that.”
Black people make up a quarter of Sanford’s population. Since Trayvon’s death, the city has pushed a broad slate of initiatives aimed at improving race relations and lifting up residents of color. Those include overhauling and diversifying the police department and creating a Race, Equality, Equity, and Inclusion Advisory Committee. The city also launched Sanford Speaks, yearly events that aim to promote community dialogue. Underlying all these efforts is a commitment to understanding residents’ needs and wants, as well as the deeper history behind them.
Residents and officials here told the Monitor they see those initiatives as genuine efforts to create a stronger, more inclusive community. Yet they also recognize the challenges that remain for this city, where race was a fraught subject long before Trayvon’s killing.
“There hasn’t been all the changes, but there has been some changes here,” says Danni Adams, an activist and Sanford native who says she pushed the city to create the REEI committee. “This [stuff] just takes time.”
“It takes an edge off”
When the Dream Defenders capped their 2012 march with a sit-in at the Sanford Police Department, Mr. Thomas and Mr. Bonaparte went to meet them. By then, some of the tension had been broken.
“It takes an edge off … when you meet somebody in a different set of circumstances and you kind of think, ‘They’re not a bad person,’” Mr. Thomas says, on a humid summer afternoon in downtown Sanford.
The two sides came to an agreement. Their plan included creating a blue-ribbon commission to spearhead police reform and a community relations department at City Hall – both policies the city implemented. But the Dream Defenders had another request: Hire a new chief of police.
Protesters across the country had excoriated then-Police Chief Bill Lee for conducting what they saw as a racially biased investigation into Trayvon’s killing. Accusations of prejudice stemmed from the department’s decision to release Mr. Zimmerman, who claimed he acted in self-defense, sans criminal charges.
On the night of the shooting, Mr. Zimmerman called the police department’s non-emergency line to report Trayvon, who was walking in the neighborhood where he was staying with his father, as “suspicious.” Mr. Zimmerman followed Trayvon, and the two eventually fought. Mr. Zimmerman shot Trayvon during the struggle.
Cameron Pugh /The Christian Science Monitor
With little evidence to establish who started the fight, the police could not contradict Mr. Zimmerman’s version of events – and had little choice but to release him, Mr. Bonaparte says. Chief Lee cited Florida’s controversial “stand your ground” law, which permits the use of deadly force “when necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm.” Still, many felt that had Trayvon been the shooter that night, he would have faced a much steeper punishment as a Black person.
A special prosecutor eventually indicted Mr. Zimmerman on a charge of second-degree murder more than six weeks after the shooting. He was acquitted in 2013.
How Sanford changed
The fierce pushback the tragedy engendered did inspire change. Mr. Bonaparte fired Chief Lee, saying he had lost the support of Sanford’s elected officials. In 2013, Cecil Smith, a career police officer from the Chicago area, took over. Chief Smith has held the job ever since – a mark of success for a department once roiled by high turnover.
Chief Smith, who is Black, faced a daunting task when he arrived in Sanford, as he tried to navigate distrust from Black residents and racism from within his own department. He relied on tried-and-true methods from his multidecade career: hitting the streets, getting out in the community.
Early in his tenure, the department often did “walk and talks,” in which he and his officers went door to door and introduced themselves with smiles. Officers went so far as to bring video games into neighborhoods and play them with local kids, aiming to build camaraderie.
The department has also aimed to look more like the community it serves. Since 2010, Sanford’s Latino population has nearly doubled from 9,100 to 17,000. The police department has changed to match: Some 29% of the department’s officers are Latino, compared with 14% in 2013, according to internal reports and federal data. Black officers, however, remain underrepresented. They make up 17% of the force – compared with 26% of the city overall – the same percentage as in 2013.
Nonetheless, Chief Smith believes it has made a difference. “We have done a 180-degree turn from being someone who is always seen as an adversary to being someone who has been a guardian,” he says. “I’m not going to say that they’re totally unafraid of the police department … but [we] are welcomed much more than we were 12 years ago.”
Ms. Adams agrees – to an extent. She says that law enforcement agencies in Sanford have followed through on many of the policy changes she, and other Black Lives Matter activists, demanded.
Cameron Pugh /The Christian Science Monitor
“The police department and the sheriffs department did what a lot of cities were asked to do,” she says.
Sanford’s police officers are now issued “compassion cards,” which allow them to use city funds to purchase necessities for residents in need. The police department also hosts community events, such as backpack giveaways, where they gift families school supplies.
Ms. Adams calls such efforts “transformational.” Yet she also says that, for many Black residents of Sanford, distrust of the police, and the city, runs deeper than anything a giveaway can fix.
“I think there’s a certain subset of this community who feels like conditions have not changed,” she says. There’s a feeling that, “‘As long as I still live in the ghetto, I will be surveilled.’”
Echoes of history
Indeed, for Black residents, Trayvon’s killing recalled a deeper history of city-backed disenfranchisement. Particularly salient was the history of Goldsboro, a historic Black neighborhood in Sanford that was once an independent town.
In 1891, Goldsboro incorporated as Florida’s second Black municipality and was among the first to do so nationally. The town was the pride of the region’s Black residents, who established themselves working on celery farms during the late 19th century. A largely independent Black community steadily grew.
Cameron Pugh /The Christian Science Monitor
But that independence didn’t last. Sanford, which sought to expand westward, wanted Goldsboro’s land. The city passed a resolution annexing Goldsboro in 1911. Soon after, the state revoked Goldsboro’s charter, and Sanford absorbed the community, disregarding protests from its residents. Goldsboro remained, but without the ability to self-govern. The 100th anniversary of the annexation passed in 2011, a year before Trayvon was killed.
With the end of Jim Crow in the mid-1960s, giving Black residents the freedom to live, shop, and work where they pleased, Goldsboro fell into decline. Today, the effects of that history remain apparent. Abandoned buildings line Historic Goldsboro Boulevard. A set of railroad tracks separates Goldsboro from Sanford’s trendy downtown.
Yet the community remains vibrant. On a bright July morning, residents gather for breakfast at Roni’s Restaurant, a local staple serving heaping helpings of soul food. Amid the clamor of kitchenware, visitors fall into casual conversation with their servers, who know many patrons by name. Over a steaming platter of eggs, bacon, and grits, Barbara Coleman-Foster says change could soon be coming to Goldsboro.
Ms. Coleman-Foster co-chairs Sanford’s REEI committee, which features a group of local leaders that advises the city. The committee launched in 2020, spawned from local protesters’ demands after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer stirred civil unrest worldwide.
For its next project, the committee is partnering with quilters from the community to create a public mural in city hall to commemorate Goldsboro’s storied history. The initiative will be the first public acknowledgment of Goldsboro’s annexation, says Mayor Art Woodruff.
Cameron Pugh /The Christian Science Monitor
Ms. Coleman-Foster says it’s long overdue. “I don’t think it benefits anyone to hide the history,” she says. “In order for us to move forward together and establish, maintain, [and] sustain a community that is welcoming and inviting for all, we’ve got to acknowledge this.”
The city has also drafted an improvement plan for Goldsboro, a sprawling outline for neighborhood advancement. Its proposals include additional affordable housing and added green space.
The plan has provided city leaders with a road map for what residents here need, says Mayor Woodruff. New housing developments have recently started construction, and the mayor plans to set aside a portion of the city’s budget for further improvements.
“Even if you don’t accomplish all the tasks in there, there’s value in bringing people to the table,” he says. “By putting bits and pieces together, we’re implementing it little by little.”
Sanford Speaks
To Ms. Adams, a Goldsboro native whose family has lived in Sanford for generations, the changes her community most urgently wants are material: more affordable housing, increased opportunities for homeownership, and additional economic investment from the city.
Yet she also sees the benefits of a far more intangible change – and one that might be the secret to Sanford’s progress.
Cameron Pugh /The Christian Science Monitor
In 2022, the REEI committee partnered with the Peace and Justice Institute, a local nonprofit, for its first Sanford Speaks event. The idea was simple: Get city residents from all walks of life into a room, and have them talk about their experiences.
Although the number of attendees at the public events is small – PJI executive director Rachel C. Allen says they typically get about 80 attendees – residents and officials report having meaningful, honest conversations.
Ms. Coleman-Foster says she would like to see more attendance, especially from Goldsboro residents.
Still, to some, the events show that the city is listening. Many city officials attend, including Mayor Woodruff and Chief Smith. “To be able to get people into a room together is not easy,” says Farra Worrell, who moved here shortly after Trayvon’s death. “When we do that, we’re making a decision that we want to see change.”
She says the spirit that underlies Sanford Speaks is part of what held the city together in the aftermath of Trayvon’s killing. Sanford did not see any violence or arrest any protesters, officials say, an accomplishment that Ms. Worrell credits to a willingness to listen.
“There’s no training for that. You have to have a heart for people,” she says. “That’s a big part of why I trust living here.”
Earlier in the series:
July 17: ‘The city becomes a canvas for storytelling.’ How Baltimore is honoring Freddie Gray.
July 7: ‘That’s the warrior spirit.’ Why Valerie Castile is determined to honor her son.
May 21: George Floyd’s family lawyer thinks the path to justice is ‘more daunting than ever’
May 18: George Floyd’s murder sparked a reckoning on race. But did America change?
