Despite attempts in the right-wing media to smear 17-year-old
Trayvon Martin with references to minor school disciplinary
problems, the overall reaction across the United States has been
outrage over his slaying and the lack of an arrest, what
Sherwood Ross calls a positive change in a nation with a long
history of racism. By Sherwood Ross The tragic killing of
Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, has provoked national
outrage and is also the subject of a Justice Department probe.
This is a far different response from the virulent racist
America of a century ago, when white America and Washington were
indifferent to such episodes. The outrage sweeping the country
today over the young man’s slaying suggests something very
important has changed for the better. Back in the 1920s, when
the Ku Klux Klan was at the pinnacle of its sadistic influence,
as many as 1,000 lynchings of black men took place in a typical
year and any national outcries against them were muted. Klansmen
could murder in cold blood and go to wo