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David Remnick: It's been a decade since a slogan, a hashtag made its way around the world. Unlike most hashtags, this one stuck. Three words: Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter doesn't sound like a radical proposition. In fact, it should be self-evident, but those words became a rallying cry.

[protesters chanting]

Then an organization, and then a movement that rivaled the civil rights era of 50 years earlier. The phrase "Black Lives Matter" first appeared in a Facebook post after an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, was shot, and his killer walked free.

Alicia Garza: After George Zimmerman was acquitted, I think there was a real sense, I can speak for myself and other Black folks that I know, not just that justice had not been served, but that that verdict essentially said to Black people across this country that our lives don't matter. That we can be holding Skittles and an iced tea and still be killed. That we can be sitting in our cars in gas stations listening to loud music and be killed. That we can be knocking on someone's door and asking for help and be shot.

David Remnick: Alicia Garza was one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, and we spoke in 2016. At its height, in the worldwide protest that followed George Floyd's murder, Black Lives Matter also became a lightning rod for all kinds of backlash, including a newly energized White supremacy movement. This week, we're looking at Black Lives Matter in its 10th year. Let's start at the beginning.

George Stephanopoulos: Breaking overnight, the verdict is in.

Unidentified Female: We, the jury, find George Zimmerman not guilty.

George Stephanopoulos: Protests break out after the high stakes trial that gripped the country. As America faces big--

David Remnick: Sybrina, it has been 11 years since your youngest son, Trayvon Martin, was killed in Sanford, Florida. When people don't know what happened in 2012, how do you go about telling them?

Sybrina Fulton: Oftentimes, I do start from the beginning, and tell people who I am and how I became a speaker, and how I became an activist and a writer and all of those things.

David Remnick: Sabryna Fulton is Trayvon Martin's mother.

Sybrina Fulton: A lot of people know my youngest son, but I have two boys. I have one in heaven and I have one on earth. A lot of people think that there are triggers, but it just feels natural to me to talk about my son just like any other parent. I tell them about, Trayvon Martin was 17 years old. He was unarmed. You had a vigilante that was 28 years old that followed him, chased him, profiled him, and ultimately shot and killed him. Trayvon was unarmed and he was 17, and he thought as a 17-year-old.

David Remnick: What do you mean he thought as a 17-year-old?

Sybrina Fulton: He was actually on a telephone call with a young lady, one of his friends that was here in Miami, and he was not paying attention. He's just like other kid, not paying attention and not being aware of his surroundings. Something parents tell you all the time, "Pay attention, pay attention, pay attention."

He had candy and he had a drink, and he was coming from the store, headed back to where him and his dad were staying at the time. Somebody took it upon themselves as a neighborhood watch captain, a wannabe police officer, but he decides that he wants to follow Trayvon to find out where he's going or who he is. I just want to state that we have to be careful for all our kids because Trayvon Martin could have been anybody's son at 17.

David Remnick: Tell me a little bit about Trayvon himself. Tell me about his name. Tell me what he was like. Where did he get his name from?

Sybrina Fulton: He got his name from his dad, because his dad name was Tracy, but he didn't want to name him Tracy, so he came up with Trayvon, and I agreed.

David Remnick: Tell me what he was like as a kid.

Sybrina Fulton: He was very affectionate. He was definitely a mama's boy. He liked to eat chips, and popcorn, and candy. He just was a big kid. He loved airplanes, but he didn't know if he wanted to fix the plane or did he want to fly the plane.

David Remnick: How long did it take for you to recover from the initial shock of his death? In that same year, you and your family founded the Trayvon Martin Foundation.

Sybrina Fulton: I think I'm going to be recovering from his death the rest of my life because it's so unnatural to bury a child. It's the worst pain ever because I've lost family members, but this is the first child that I've lost. It's something that's severe that if you have not experienced this, you wouldn't understand.

You wouldn't understand losing a person that you carry for nine months and now that person is walking, your heart is walking outside your body, literally. Now your heart has been killed and now you have to continue to function. You have to continue to move forward. You have to continue to be trusting God. You have to continue to be positive and try to live your life. It's hard. It's a struggle. It's a struggle every day. I'm still Trayvon Martin's mom. I'm still Jahvaris Fulton's mom. It doesn't matter how old they are, I'm always going to be mom.

David Remnick: At what point did it become obvious to you that Trayvon's name would become this-- It just took on a hugely important and resonant presence in the world. A year later, Black Lives Matter was first posted on social media.

Sybrina Fulton: I think when we went to New York, we was at Union Square, they had something called the Million Hoodie March. We had just finished doing a whole set of interviews with different people about what had happened. We was trying to get an arrest.

Reverend Sharpton was the last person we interviewed with, and he said, "They're doing a Million Hoodie rally and since you guys are in town, in New York, you should stop over and just say a few words and thank the people." We thought, maybe, okay, a few people would be out there and we was just going to go out there. I was already sick. I'm not as used to New York weather. I'm used to Florida weather, of course.

We went out there. When we got out the vehicles, it was packed with people. It was thousands of people. We were like, "What's going on?" They were like, "This is the Million Hoodie rally." What I found out later is that organization got this together in about two to three days, because there was so many people out there. I'm not going to say they didn't know who he was. They definitely knew who he was, but they had never met him. It resonated with a lot of people. A lot of people, they didn't quite feel what we were feeling, but it hurt.

One thing I think about now as we are talking about this, my son, who was 17 years old, who was unarmed, was on the ground, deceased. The person that was standing over him with a loaded gun was able to go home and get in his bed. He went to the police station, and then he went home. My son went to the morgue.

They did a drug and alcohol testing on my son, but they never did a drug and alcohol testing, and a background check on the person who stood over him with the loaded gun. It seems twisted. It looks like you would do drug and alcohol testing on the person who shot the gun, not the person who received a bullet. That right there shows you that United States has a problem with color, number one, because had my son shot someone, they definitely would've did a background check on him. They definitely would've did a drug and alcohol testing on him, and he would've been behind bars that night.

David Remnick: He was so resonant that I think I remember President Obama saying, "If I'd had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin."

Sybrina Fulton: Yes.

President Obama: My main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon. I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we're going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.

David Remnick: The next year, in 2013, you testified in front of a Senate subcommittee to demand changes to what's called the stand-your-ground laws. What did you know about the law before Trayvon was killed? What did Trayvon know, if anything, and what do you know now?

Sybrina Fulton: I had no clue what stand your ground was. It was through our attorneys that told us-- I think most people had not heard about stand your ground. They knew about the castle doctrine, meaning, you can protect yourself in your own household, but nobody really heard about the stand-your-ground law.

David Remnick: Sybrina, at around the same time that Black Lives Matter started, you founded something called Circle of Mothers, which is a nonprofit organization, that hosts retreats for grieving mothers.

Sybrina Fulton: Yes. I got up in the middle of the night, and I got a paper and I got a pen, and I just started writing because it was as if I had already been to the Circle of Mothers. I can't even explain it. I got on the phone, and I started sending text messages out, and I told them, "Listen, you all have to meet with me, so I can tell you this idea that I had." People were telling me about their dogs, their grandmother, their great-grandmother, a mother, father.

It is nothing like losing a child. I don't want to take away from someone's loved one, but by the same token is not the same thing. The only person that reached out to me that I felt really understood what I was going through was Tupac Shakur's mother, Afeni Shakur, she was my first keynote speaker, and I'll never forget it. I'm going to take it to my grave because I felt like nobody understood.

David Remnick: Eight years after your son died, came the summer of 2020, and George Floyd and an uprising in many cities around this country, many cities and towns, and people thought things would get markedly better, have they?

Sybrina Fulton: To a certain extent, yes. I have seen police officers now being arrested and actually being convicted and going to jail. Even with George Floyd, we didn't have a lot of faith that that officer was going to be held accountable for his actions, and we can't have that right before our eyes. I was not happy, but I felt like it's about time they did something about it. He had a trial, he had a jury, and he was convicted, and he's in jail. That one was held accountable, but there's so many others that were not held accountable.

David Remnick: Sybrina Fulton is the mother of Trayvon Martin, and her group, Circle of Mothers, hosts an annual retreat for mothers who've lost children to gun violence.

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