Yesterday was Emmett Till's birthday. The president declared a national monument honoring Emmett and his mother, Mamie. The monument is spread over three sites: the place in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi where his body was found after the lynching; the church in Chicago where his funeral was held; and the Mississippi courthouse where an all-white jury acquitted the two white men who admitted after their acquittal that they had in fact murdered him.
Those men are now dead, but the white woman whose accusation prompted the attack on Emmett is still alive. She was named in an arrest warrant in 1955 as a party to his abduction and murder. For unclear reasons she was never been prosecuted, and state and federal authorities have refused to charge her.
Emmett's torture and murder, and the acquittal of his murderers, are often cited as a spark that ignited the mid-Twentieth Century civil rights movement. Rosa Parks later told Emmett's mother that she had been thinking of his case when she refused to give up her seat on the bus.
(I don't remember how old I was when I first heard of Emmett's murder, maybe about 9 or 10. I remember overhearing my great aunts mention his name and asking them who they were talking about. I was told that he was a young teen who had been lynched in the South after allegedly saying something he wasn't supposed to say to a white woman, and that his mother had been so upset and angry that she had insisted his casket be kept open during the funeral so that the world could see the violence that had been visited on him.
It wasn't until decades later that I came to realize that although Emmett had been lynched in the South, he had actually lived in the North. He had only been on a trip visiting relatives in Mississippi that fateful day.
As it turned out, Emmett had attended the same elementary school in Chicago as my grandmother and mother, the school which several of my younger cousins were attending when I first heard his story (and which one of my nieces would attend many years later). The same school my mother would for a time teach at. In fact, Emmett lived just one block down the street from where my mother was living in those years. With my mother being only about 4 years younger than Emmett was, she might have even seen him at school or in the neighborhood at some point.)
Even outside of Florida, perhaps not everyone is familiar with Bob Dylan's early song on Emmett Till: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0vClQa1Hw&ab_channel=Murermesterhans
You are right. I did not know that Carolyn Bryant Donham died 3 months ago.
The last I had seen about her was the sheriff saying there was no point in serving an arrest warrant on her because a grand jury last year decided against an indictment. That report was from just days before her death.
Wallerstein has not commented since yesterday. I’m worried. Is he, too, still here?
ReplyDeleteYesterday was Emmett Till's birthday. The president declared a national monument honoring Emmett and his mother, Mamie. The monument is spread over three sites: the place in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi where his body was found after the lynching; the church in Chicago where his funeral was held; and the Mississippi courthouse where an all-white jury acquitted the two white men who admitted after their acquittal that they had in fact murdered him.
ReplyDeleteThose men are now dead, but the white woman whose accusation prompted the attack on Emmett is still alive. She was named in an arrest warrant in 1955 as a party to his abduction and murder. For unclear reasons she was never been prosecuted, and state and federal authorities have refused to charge her.
Emmett's torture and murder, and the acquittal of his murderers, are often cited as a spark that ignited the mid-Twentieth Century civil rights movement. Rosa Parks later told Emmett's mother that she had been thinking of his case when she refused to give up her seat on the bus.
(I don't remember how old I was when I first heard of Emmett's murder, maybe about 9 or 10. I remember overhearing my great aunts mention his name and asking them who they were talking about. I was told that he was a young teen who had been lynched in the South after allegedly saying something he wasn't supposed to say to a white woman, and that his mother had been so upset and angry that she had insisted his casket be kept open during the funeral so that the world could see the violence that had been visited on him.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't until decades later that I came to realize that although Emmett had been lynched in the South, he had actually lived in the North. He had only been on a trip visiting relatives in Mississippi that fateful day.
As it turned out, Emmett had attended the same elementary school in Chicago as my grandmother and mother, the school which several of my younger cousins were attending when I first heard his story (and which one of my nieces would attend many years later). The same school my mother would for a time teach at. In fact, Emmett lived just one block down the street from where my mother was living in those years. With my mother being only about 4 years younger than Emmett was, she might have even seen him at school or in the neighborhood at some point.)
Even outside of Florida, perhaps not everyone is familiar with Bob Dylan's early song on Emmett Till: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-0vClQa1Hw&ab_channel=Murermesterhans
ReplyDeleteThere is another Dylan song, EVERYTHING IS BROKEN 1989, worth giving another listen to given everything
ReplyDeleteAnonymous,
ReplyDeleteSo terribly sorry to keep you on edge for so long, but I was out all day. My apologies.
Thank you for your patience and good will.
aaall,
ReplyDeleteYou are right. I did not know that Carolyn Bryant Donham died 3 months ago.
The last I had seen about her was the sheriff saying there was no point in serving an arrest warrant on her because a grand jury last year decided against an indictment. That report was from just days before her death.