Black mothers speak out against racism, police violence in US

The mothers of four unarmed African American males killed by white police officers spoke out on Friday against police brutality and racial injustice in the United States.

During an interview on CNN, the mothers of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice and Eric Garner said they have no doubt that their sons would still be alive if they were white.

Sybrina Fulton, the mother of Trayvon Martin, was joined by Lesley McSpadden, Michael Brown’s mother; Samaria Rice, Tamir Rice’s mother and Gwen Carr, the mother of Eric Garner.

The white police officers that killed their sons by bullets or excessive force have not been indicted.

“I think absolutely my son’s race and the color of his skin had a lot to do with why he was shot and killed,” Fulton told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “In all of these cases, these victims were unarmed. These victims were African American. That needs to be our conversation.”

“It seems our kids are getting younger and younger,” Fulton said. “They’re killing them younger and younger. There is no regard anymore for human life. There has to be somewhere where we draw the line and say, ‘Listen, our kids want to grow up, too.'”

“If Eric Garner was a white man in Suffolk County doing the same thing that he was doing — even if he would have been caught selling cigarettes that day — they would have given him a summons and he wouldn’t have lost his life that day,” Carr said. “I believe that 100 percent.”

Martin, 17, was shot and killed on February 2012 in Florida in by George Zimmerman, a half white, half Hispanic volunteer neighborhood watch captain. Eighteen-year-old Brown was shot and killed on August 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, by a white police officer who later resigned.

Garner, 43, died on July 17 in the New York City borough of Staten Island after he was put in a chokehold by police. Rice,12, was shot last month by a Cleveland officer after he allegedly mistook the boy’s toy gun for a real one.

Protests have been ongoing intermittently for months in the US against police violence and racial profiling.