The Fire This Time

Ward reacts to the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman on February 26, 2012, and seeks solidarity for her grief on Twitter. She reads responses to Trayvon’s death online in the midst of her pregnancy while editing a book. Ward is surprised that no one else sees Trayvon as a child.

She realizes how Trayvon’s black identity biases most Americans against him and draws their attention to his most rebellious habits. Ward identifies with the claustrophobia of Trayvon’s life in the South, where the legacy of slavery persists and continues to breed prejudice. 

Ward describes Senator Trent Lott from her home state, Mississippi. Lott supported Senator Strom Thurmond’s filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and Ward recalls meeting Lott years earlier. The only black student in the group, Ward watched Lott snap a long whip in the air. She writes, “I remember the experience in my bones” (6). 

She compares the devaluation of her black identity with a “dark twin” (6). She lists the other dark twins the public ascribes to murdered black Americans such as Trayvon, Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, and Emmett Till. Although the mechanisms of racial prejudice may have changed, racism itself has not.