Trayvon Martin’s hoodie to be displayed at Smithsonian museum?

Trayvon Martin’s hoodie, which has become a symbol for race relations in America, could be headed to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

The director of the Institution’s coming National Museum of African American History and Culture said he’d like to have the hooded sweatshirt on display.

“It became the symbolic way to talk the Trayvon Martin case. It’s rare that you get one artifact that really becomes the symbol,” Lonnie Bunch told the Washington Post. “Because it’s such a symbol, it would allow you to talk about race in the age of Obama.”

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Martin, 17, was wearing the gray pullover last year when he was fatally shot by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla.

The garment became a sign of solidarity with the slain teen: Hoodies were worn at rallies, church services and by senators and celebrities.

Other items from famous criminal cases have ended up on display. The Newseum in Washington, D.C, has Ted Kaczinski’s cabin and the ill-fitting gloves from O.J. Simpson’s trial were part of an exhibit at the Palms Resort in Las Vegas.

Bunch has assembled a collection of court artifacts for the African American History museum, which is expected to open in 2015, including the handcuffs used to restrain Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the guard tower from Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Penitentiary.

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