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Posted: 3:30 a.m. Monday, March 26, 2012

Trayvon Martin protests head to Ga. Capitol

Rev. Raphael Warnock hoodie protest
Vino Wong/AJC
Rev. Raphael Warnock wears a Morehouse hooded sweatshirt, otherwise known as a hoodie, during his Sunday morning sermon. Trayvon Martin wearing a hooded sweatshirt was shot to death Feb. 26 by a neighborhood crime-watch volunteer in Sanford, FL, as he was returning to a gated community, carrying candy and ice-tea. Many in the congregation also don hoodies while protest have popped up nationwide, with thousands of people, many of them wearing hoodies calling for action after the teen's death.

By Jay Black

Atlantans are protesting the killing of Trayvon Martin everywhere from the Georgia Capitol to church.

Monday students from Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University, and John Marshall Law School will gather at the Capitol for a Skittles-and-hoodies protest.

The students protest will also center on Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which is defense being used to justify the action of the neighborhood watch captain who shot Martin.

Demonstrators will target several gun bills still under consideration by the Legislature. They consider them “a continuation” of Georgia’s 2006 law that expanded the circumstances under which a shooter could claim self-defense.

Meanwhile, the hoodie has become the gesture of support for the 17-year-old killed in Florida.

On Sunday, the pastor of Atlanta’s most famous church greeted his congregation in a Morehouse College hoodie to show support for Martin.

Rev. Raphael G. Warnock, senior pastor of Atlanta's historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and his congregation joined churchgoers nationwide Sunday with sermons, prayer vigils and marches to protest of what they believe is a case of racial profiling.

"They said his name was Trayvon Martin. But he looked like Emmett Till," said Warnock, referring to the boy whose lynching more than a half-century ago raised awareness of the brutal realities of Jim Crow laws. "At least with Emmett Till someone was arrested. And that was in 1955."

Ingrid Lester, 64, showed up for services wearing a hooded sweatshirt with a Skittles wrapper pinned to it. She said the Martin case reminded her of the struggle to end segregation in the 1960s, when she was a teenager. And she said the church had a crucial role to play now, just as it did then.

"We need a voice, and the church is our voice," she said.

At First Iconium Baptist, another predominantly black church in Atlanta, the Rev. Timothy McDonald told congregants at the early Sunday service, "We will not rest until Mr. Zimmerman who killed young Trayvon Martin is arrested. This could have been any one of our children."

The one-month anniversary of Martin's death is Monday. He was shot while wearing a "hoodie" as he walked home on a rainy night in a gated community.

The neighborhood watch volunteer who shot him, 28-year-old Zimmerman, is the son of a white father and Hispanic mother, and the demands to charge him in Martin's slaying have grown ever louder. He had called police to report the hooded figure as suspicious; the 17-year-old Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea, talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone.