Tag Archives: Emmett Till

Sixty-Seven Years Ago …

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

This is a repeat of a post I published on this date last year.  With all the efforts by certain states to whitewash the history of this nation, or to simply refrain from teaching our next generation about the history of the nation they live in, I think it is more important than ever before to be reminded of some parts of our past.  Disturbing?  Hell yes!  But it happened and to ignore it is a crime … one that will have serious consequences in the future.  And so, please bear with me as I tell you the story of Emmett Till once again …

It was sixty-seven years ago today that a 14-year-old boy, Emmett Till, was brutally murdered for the crime of being Black in a town called Money, Mississippi.  You all know the story, but allow me to just quickly refresh your memories …

Emmett was from ‘up north’ in Chicago, but his mother had sent him to Mississippi to spend the final two weeks of summer with his beloved grandfather before returning to school.  One day he went into a small store to buy some candy and as the cashier returned his change, his hand accidentally and briefly touched hers.  That, my friends, was all it took to get this young man killed.

By the time the story had been spread and embellished on, it was said that he caressed the clerk … a woman much older than Emmett who he would likely have seen as being the age of his own mother … had wolf-whistled and flirted with her.  While none of these are crimes, more importantly, he did none of the above as witnesses would later recall.  But this was Mississippi in the 1950s, the Jim Crow era.

Long story short, his assailants—the white woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, John Milam—dragged young Emmett from his grandfather’s home and made him carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

In September a trial was held for the two murderers and on September 23, the all-white, all-male jury deliberated 67 minutes before acquitting Bryant and Milam. Jurors later admitted in interviews that although they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty of Till’s murder, they did not think imprisonment or the death penalty were appropriate punishments for white men who had killed a black man.  The white woman, Carolyn Bryant, later recanted her testimony.

Why do I rehash this story today?  This is one of thousands of tragic stories from that era, but it is one that has received the most attention, one that we can point to and say, “That is who we used to be.”  Or … can we?  I have fairly recently come to believe that it is still who some of us are today.  I don’t think it’s a long stretch of the imagination to think of a similar atrocity happening in 21st Century Mississippi … or Alabama … Louisiana … Texas.

This is why we MUST teach about Emmett Till and the others in our schools today.  We must open the eyes of our young people to the past in order to ensure we don’t repeat that sordid past.  Just a few weeks ago, before Afghanistan took the spotlight, there was a big brouhaha about teaching ‘Critical Race Theory’ in the schools.  There is an element of our society who would have future generations believe that the U.S. was founded only on compassion and altruism, that the nation’s history is all rosy and beautiful.  It isn’t.

Every single schoolchild by the age of 12 should be aware of the story of Emmett Till, as well as Thomas Moss, Will Stewart, Calvin McDowell and thousands of others. Don’t recognize those names?  Look them up!  Some 6,500 Black people were lynched in the United States between 1865 and 1950 – and that’s only the ones we know about.  No, this is not the ‘pretty’ part of our history BUT … it IS part of our history, part of what has made this nation what it is today.  To hide it, to sweep it under the carpet, is criminal and ultimately will lead us right back to that dirty, dark place of the Jim Crow era.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go back there.

The Story Of Emmett Till Continues

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Almost a year ago, I wrote of the tragic story of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old boy who was brutally murdered in Mississippi in 1955.  In recent weeks, a warrant was discovered for the woman who falsely accused Till of making a pass at her … an accusation that led to his murder.  That warrant was never served … it was, after all, 1955 Mississippi where a white woman’s word was valued far more than the life of a young Black person like Emmett Till.  Charles Blow’s column on Sunday is a heart-wrenching plea for justice … though no amount of justice will give Emmett Till his life back.

Shed No Tears for Carolyn Bryant Donham

By Charles M. Blow

Opinion Columnist

17 July 2022

Enough!

In 1955, Carolyn Bryant Donham (then just Carolyn Bryant), a 21-year-old white woman, accused Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, of making an unwelcome advance at her.

Those accusations led to the boy’s brutal murder. Her then-husband, Roy Bryant, and brother-in-law, J.W. Milam, were charged with the crime.

Now the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting has obtained a copy of an unpublished memoir by Donham in which she reportedly wrote that she “tried to protect” the boy by telling her husband, “He’s not the one. That’s not him. Please take him home.”

And, in an astonishing stroke of insensitivity, she wrote that she “always felt like a victim as well as Emmett.”

Ma’am, hush! You have been alive and breathing for nearly 67 years since Till’s bloated body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River with the fan of a cotton gin tied around his neck.

Donham is now an elderly woman, but let’s be clear: Don’t shed a single tear for her.

She didn’t just accuse Till of making improper advances on the day she first encountered the boy; she upped the ante at trial, saying that Till had also physically assaulted her, grabbing her hand so hard that it was difficult to jerk it loose, and then grabbing her around her waist.

She casually called the murdered boy the N-word at trial, referring to Till as a N-word “man,” even though by the time of the trial, everyone knew he was a boy.

And she wasn’t the only one to mislabel him. At one point, the defense attorney asked: “When you got your pistol, Mrs. Bryant, where was this boy then? Or I should say, where was this man?”

The adultification of Black children continues unabated as a means of justifying deadly force visited upon their bodies. When the police shot Tamir Rice in a Cleveland park within seconds of arriving on the scene, the officer who called in the shooting said, “Shots fired, male down, Black male, maybe 20.” Rice was 12 years old.

In Donham’s interview with the F.B.I. in the mid-2000s, when the case was reopened, she said that the boy accosted her and that “as soon as he touched me, I started screaming for Juanita.” There was no screaming in the original testimony.

In his 2017 book, the historian Timothy Tyson claimed that Donham recanted parts of her trial testimony, writing: “But about her testimony that Till had grabbed her around the waist and uttered obscenities, she now told me, ‘That part’s not true.’ ”

Donham’s family denies that she recanted.

One question still lingers: Donham was involved in Till’s abduction. Till’s uncle Moses testified at trial that when Bryant and Milam kidnapped the boy, they took him outside to their car, where a third person identified him in a voice that seemed to him “a lighter voice than a man’s.”

Late last month, an unserved arrest warrant for Donham “on a charge of kidnapping” was found in the basement of a Mississippi courthouse. Yet in a statement Donham gave in 1955, she said that she “did not go to this Negro’s house” but instead Bryant took the boy to her to identify.

But according to an account by the author Douglas O. Linder, Donham was in the truck with Bryant and Milam earlier on the day of the kidnapping “looking for their target” when they seized another Black man before throwing him out of the truck after Donham said he wasn’t the right N-word.

Then when Bryant and Milam were acquitted at the trial, the killers kissed their wives, lit cigars and posed for pictures. Donham was one of the kissed wives. Where was the remorse? Where is it now?

Less than a year after the trial ended, in 1956, Bryant and Milam confessed to the gruesome murder in an interview in Look magazine. Still, Donham stayed married to the killer for about 20 years after Till was killed and never offered a public word about the matter.

In the memoir, she writes that when her husband brought the boy to her for identification, Till “flashed me a strange smile and said, ‘Yes, it was me,’ or something to that effect.” He didn’t act “scared in the least,” she wrote.

This, by the way, is the same reason Milam gave to Look for murdering the boy. Even though Bryant and Milam took turns pistol whipping the boy in a tool shed in the early morning, Milam said: “We were never able to scare him. They had just filled him so full of that poison that he was hopeless.”

The legal system has declined for decades to charge Donham with a crime, and on Friday an aide to the Mississippi attorney general made clear that there are no plans to reopen the case against Donham now.

But, beyond the criminal measure, Donham has failed the moral measure. She has failed at every turn to offer a redeeming word or action for the boy’s murder and her part in it. The words we’ve seen in this memoir don’t cut it.

The only sympathy I have about this case is for Emmett Till and his family. For Donham, I have only questions, and contempt.

A Century Late … 4,743 Lives

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

The first federal anti-lynching bill was introduced by Representative George Henry White of North Carolina in 1900.  It never made it to the House floor for a vote. In the years since, more than 200 similar bills have been filed, none of which have passed through both chambers of Congress. Until yesterday.

Lynching was a favorite tool of the Ku Klux Klan and other hate groups in the years after the Civil War, terrorizing black communities out of political activism and into silence for fear of their lives.  For decades, white southerners used lynching, Jim Crow laws, and voter suppression to maintain white supremacy. After World War I, increased European immigration, fears of communism, and the Great Migration of African Americans from the South to major industrial cities in the North and Midwest led to increased instances of lynching.

Between 1882 and 1968, nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in Congress, and seven U.S. presidents between 1890 and 1952 asked Congress to pass a federal anti-lynching law.  Probably the most famous anti-lynching proposal was the Dyer Anti-Lynching Bill, first introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Missouri Republican Leonidas C. Dyer on April 8, 1918. Several bills were introduced in the 1920s, then again in the 1930s and 1940s, passed several times by the House of Representatives, but never actually coming to a vote in the United States Senate.

For decades, white people treated lynchings as an entertainment venue, bringing picnic lunches and their children with them to watch a Black man (or woman) dangle at the end of a rope.  Professional photographers were hired to take pictures from which postcards were created, sent to family and friends.

Postcard of the 1920 Duluth, Minnesota lynchings. Two of the Black victims are still hanging while the third is on the ground. Postcards of lynchings were popular souvenirs in the U.S.

The last known lynching in the U.S. was on March 21, 1981 when several Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members beat and killed Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African-American, and hung his body from a tree. Some will say that since there have been no lynchings (that we know of) for the past four decades, the bill was unnecessary.  Even so, the bill that passed yesterday and that is due to be signed by President Biden will create a law that is way past due.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said …

“Hallelujah — it is long overdue. That it took so long is a stain, a bitter stain on America.”

The bill, aptly named after Emmett Till, the 14-year-old Black boy who was brutally tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955, passed in the House of Representatives last month and in the Senate yesterday.  In the House, only three representatives, all predictably Republicans from southern states, voted against the bill – Representatives Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Chip Roy of Texas.

A mural in Chicago of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old who was lynched in 1955. Representative Bobby L. Rush, Democrat of Illinois, said that as a boy, seeing a photo of Emmett’s battered body “shaped my consciousness as a Black man in America.”Credit…Scott Olson/Getty Images

This bill has been bouncing around in Congress since it was first introduced in 2018 by Senators Cory Booker, Tim Scott, and then-Senator Kamala Harris.  In 2020, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul objected, starting a fight in the Senate and effectively killing the bill for the time being.  This time, however, he supported the bill, saying …

“I’m pleased to have worked with Senators Booker and Scott to strengthen the final product and ensure the language of this bill defines lynching as the absolutely heinous crime that it is.”

I shall bite my tongue regarding Mr. Paul’s hypocrisy.  The long-overdue bill makes lynching a federal hate crime punishable by up to 30 years in prison.  A day late and a dollar short, as they say, but still … better late than never.  It won’t bring back the lives of Emmett Till and the other 4,742 people who have been lynched by white supremacists for no reason other than the colour of their skin, but it may prevent a resurgence of lynching in this day when racism is on the rise.

Uncomfortable Violence

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

Anti-lynching bills that would make lynching a federal crime have been bouncing around in Congress since 1918. The most recent was the Emmett Till Antilynching Act which passed in the House of Representatives in February 2020 but never made it through the U.S. Senate. This, my friends, is an abomination!!! Our friend Brosephus, continuing his series for Black History Month, tells us of the lynching of Michael Donald who was lynched on March 21st, 1981. The story is unique because … well, I’ll let Brosephus explain why …

The Mind of Brosephus

Lynching is an ugly stain on the fabric of America. It’s one of those ugly truths about our history that many people want to forget or ignore. Totals differ depending on the sources, but the estimates are that between 4 and 5 thousand people were lynched in the US after the Civil War and up to the Civil Rights Era.

Lynching was mob violence condoned by the government. Most often, the violence was carried out by the Ku Klux Klan, but there were many instances of regular everyday white citizens forming a mob to lynch someone. These mobs acted with little to no fear of law enforcement. Some mobs even took on a party-like atmosphere.

I’ve often wondered why the counts end with the Civil Rights Era when lynching didn’t end during that time frame. I was born after the Civil Rights time, and the last verified lynching by a…

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Sixty-Six Years Ago …

Posted on by under education, History, Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

It was sixty-six years ago today that a 14-year-old boy, Emmett Till, was brutally murdered for the crime of being Black in a town called Money, Mississippi.  You all know the story, but allow me to just quickly refresh your memories …

Emmett was from ‘up north’ in Chicago, but his mother had sent him to Mississippi to spend the final two weeks of summer with his beloved grandfather before returning to school.  One day he went into a small store to buy some candy and as the cashier returned his change, his hand accidentally and briefly touched hers.  That, my friends, was all it took to get this young man killed.

By the time the story had been spread and embellished on, it was said that he caressed the clerk … a woman much older than Emmett who he would likely have seen as being the age of his own mother … had wolf-whistled and flirted with her.  While none of these are crimes, more importantly, he did none of the above as witnesses would later recall.  But this was Mississippi in the 1950s, the Jim Crow era.

Long story short, his assailants—the white woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, John Milam—dragged young Emmett from his grandfather’s home and made him carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

In September a trial was held for the two murderers and on September 23, the all-white, all-male jury deliberated 67 minutes before acquitting Bryant and Milam. Jurors later admitted in interviews that although they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty of Till’s murder, they did not think imprisonment or the death penalty were appropriate punishments for white men who had killed a black man.  The white woman, Carolyn Bryant, later recanted her testimony.

Why do I rehash this story today?  This is one of thousands of tragic stories from that era, but it is one that has received the most attention, one that we can point to and say, “That is who we used to be.”  Or … can we?  I have fairly recently come to believe that it is still who some of us are today.  I don’t think it’s a long stretch of the imagination to think of a similar atrocity happening in 21st Century Mississippi … or Alabama … Louisiana … Texas.

This is why we MUST teach about Emmett Till and the others in our schools today.  We must open the eyes of our young people to the past in order to ensure we don’t repeat that sordid past.  Just a few weeks ago, before Afghanistan took the spotlight, there was a big brouhaha about teaching ‘Critical Race Theory’ in the schools.  There is an element of our society who would have future generations believe that the U.S. was founded only on compassion and altruism, that the nation’s history is all rosy and beautiful.  It isn’t.

Every single schoolchild by the age of 12 should be aware of the story of Emmett Till, as well as Thomas Moss, Will Stewart, Calvin McDowell and thousands of others. Don’t recognize those names?  Look them up!  Some 6,500 Black people were lynched in the United States between 1865 and 1950 – and that’s only the ones we know about.  No, this is not the ‘pretty’ part of our history BUT … it IS part of our history, part of what has made this nation what it is today.  To hide it, to sweep it under the carpet, is criminal and ultimately will lead us right back to that dirty, dark place of the Jim Crow era.  I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to go back there.

John Lewis’ Final Words …

Posted on by under Election 2020, Global Issues, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

John Lewis knew he had few days left on this earth, and he left a powerful message to us all to be published on the day of his funeral, today.  I let his words speak for themselves …

John-Lewis

While my time here has now come to an end, I want you to know that in the last days and hours of my life you inspired me. You filled me with hope about the next chapter of the great American story when you used your power to make a difference in our society. Millions of people motivated simply by human compassion laid down the burdens of division. Around the country and the world you set aside race, class, age, language and nationality to demand respect for human dignity.

That is why I had to visit Black Lives Matter Plaza in Washington, though I was admitted to the hospital the following day. I just had to see and feel it for myself that, after many years of silent witness, the truth is still marching on.

Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland and Breonna Taylor. He was 14 when he was killed, and I was only 15 years old at the time. I will never ever forget the moment when it became so clear that he could easily have been me. In those days, fear constrained us like an imaginary prison, and troubling thoughts of potential brutality committed for no understandable reason were the bars.

Though I was surrounded by two loving parents, plenty of brothers, sisters and cousins, their love could not protect me from the unholy oppression waiting just outside that family circle. Unchecked, unrestrained violence and government-sanctioned terror had the power to turn a simple stroll to the store for some Skittles or an innocent morning jog down a lonesome country road into a nightmare. If we are to survive as one unified nation, we must discover what so readily takes root in our hearts that could rob Mother Emanuel Church in South Carolina of her brightest and best, shoot unwitting concertgoers in Las Vegas and choke to death the hopes and dreams of a gifted violinist like Elijah McClain.

Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.

Ordinary people with extraordinary vision can redeem the soul of America by getting in what I call good trouble, necessary trouble. Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it.

You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, though decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time. Continue to build union between movements stretching across the globe because we must put away our willingness to profit from the exploitation of others.

Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring.

When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide.

You Cannot Un-Lynch A Dead Man …

Posted on by under Political commentary

“In August 1955, Emmett Till, a black teenager from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi when he stopped at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. There he encountered Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Whether Till really flirted with Bryant or whistled at her isn’t known. But what happened four days later is. Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, seized the 14-year-old from his great-uncle’s house. The pair then beat Till, shot him, and strung barbed wire and a 75-pound metal fan around his neck and dumped the lifeless body in the Tallahatchie River. A white jury quickly acquitted the men, with one juror saying it had taken so long only because they had to break to drink some pop. When Till’s mother Mamie came to identify her son, she told the funeral director, “Let the people see what I’ve seen.” She brought him home to Chicago and insisted on an open casket. Tens of thousands filed past Till’s remains, but it was the publication of the searing funeral image in Jet, with a stoic Mamie gazing at her murdered child’s ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism.” – Time 

till-carolyn

Carolyn Bryant

Just yesterday (Friday, 27 January 2017), it was made known that the person who caused Emmett Till’s murder, Carolyn Bryant (Donham) confessed that she lied back in 1955.  She lied … because … ???    Who knows?  The reality is that all Emmett Till did was wolf-whistle at 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant who was working behind the counter in the family-owned grocery store where Till was paying for his bubble gum.  A 14-year-old kid.  Whistled at an attractive young woman.  And for this he lost his life in the most brutal fashion imaginable.

Carolyn actually walked to the door behind young Emmett and his cousins, whereby Emmett, being from Chicago and not familiar with “southern protocol” waved, said “good-bye”, not “good-bye ma’am”, as was the “proper” way for a black male to address a white female in the racist southern culture, and as he reached the car, gave a wolf-whistle.  Carolyn, apparently never having been whistled at before, said she was afraid. She was Afraid. Of a Whistle. That evening, she reported the incident to her husband Roy, but she embellished the story just a bit.  She said that Emmett had grabbed her and was menacing and sexually crude toward her. Mr. Bryant, a good ol’ southern white boy, was instantly enraged and along with his friend, J.W. Milam dragged Emmett out of his uncle’s home where he was visiting, beat him, shot him, wrapped barbed wire around his neck, tied a 75-pound weight around him and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River. All because he whistled and did not say “ma’am”. Let that one sink in for a minute.

till-killers

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam

Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were tried the following month, and were acquitted by an all-white jury after only 67 minutes of deliberation, during which time the jury took one break.  The next year, Bryant and Milam confessed to killing Till in an interview with Look Magazine  for which they were reportedly paid between $3,600 – $4,000.  The law of double jeopardy prevented them being tried again, though I would argue that their public confession constituted new evidence and therefore they could have been re-tried. But alas, it was Mississippi in the 1950s.

till-tyson.jpgNow fast-forward to yesterday, when it was made public that Ms. Donham actually confessed to the lie in 2007.  Yes, ten years ago, Donham, formerly Carolyn Bryant, confessed to Timothy B. Tyson, a Duke University professor and historian, specializing in issues of race and culture associated with the Civil Rights movement.  It is believed to be the only interview she has ever given.  Why did Tyson wait ten years to share this knowledge with the public?  Because he wanted to write a book.  Yes, folks, Timothy B. Tyson withheld information about a lie that led to murder for ten years for p-r-o-f-i-t.  Tyson’s book, titled The Blood of Emmett Till, is to be released next Tuesday, 31 January, and I hope it does not sell a single copy.  This man withheld this information for TEN YEARS so that he could profit from a book. He is a disgrace to mankind.

till-mother-funeral

Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley, Emmett’s mother

 

As noted in the first paragraph, Emmett Till’s mother demanded an open casket because she wanted the world to see what had been done to her son.  Sadly, she died in 2003 without learning the truth.  Or, perhaps it was better that she not know. The murder of Emmett Till is considered to be one of the catalysts that prompted the Civil Rights movement.

Mr. Tyson noted in an interview on Friday with Vanity Fair magazine that “That case went a long way toward ruining her [Donham’s] life.”  Perhaps I am cruel and heartless, but I have zero sympathy for Ms. Donham.  It happened 62 years ago. Nothing that has happened since that day would have changed the outcome for Emmett Till.  But there is a lot of guilt to go around here, including the guilt of Timothy B. Tyson for withholding information from law enforcement and the public for ten long years while he wrote his book.

Today, after reading about Ms. Donham’s confession and writing this post, I am thinking of Ferguson, Missouri and the killing of Michael Brown.  I think of Sanford, Florida and the killing of Trayvon Martin.  I think of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge.  Different situations, certainly, but I wonder if in 50-60 years, somebody will come forward and say, as Ms. Donham did … “I lied”.