Trayvon Martin Case Hits Home For Chelmsford Teen

The case of Trayvon Martin has drawn strong emotions from people of all races and political persuasions, from the night he was shot this winter to the conclusion of the court case centered around his death this weekend.

Those emotions have stretched from his home in Florida throughout the country, including one instance right here in Chelmsford.

Kate Burgess is a 17-year-old student at Chelmsford High School that was so touched by the events around Martin’s shooting that she’s written a song in his memory, a song she hopes can spread awareness around the issue, even with the recent court decision.

Burgess wrote the song late one night earlier this winter after hearing about the incident out of what she called an emotional bond with the fallen young man.

“It hit me because I’m very close in age to him and I assume he had no idea what was going on. It upset me because he seemed so innocent and couldn’t defend himself,” said Burgess. “Everything that I was feeling I got down on paper. I saw it on the news and I knew I didn’t have a full grasp of the story, but I wanted to share what I was feeling and what I thought he was feeling and just wrote.”

At first, it was just a project for an English class, one of several songs she had written for the assignment. But ultimately she did not share this work with her classmates, instead putting it directly on the internet in the hopes of somehow making an impact on the discussion around the case as well as letting Martin’s family know that there were people in Chelmsford empathetic to her son’s death.

“I really just wanted to get it out there. If I could, I’d be anonymous about it, but I wanted to get the message across that it was unfair,” she said. “I know I’m only just a 17-year-old girl from suburban Chelmsford, but I wanted to make an impact on somehow making it more important in society.”

You can hear her song, along with guitar and harmonica work from her family members, on Youtube.