After Professor McKinney mentioned Emmett Till in class I
decided to follow his advice and look up Till’s story. I knew the basics of
what happened in that two white men murdered a young black boy for “flirting”
with a white woman. However, there was so much more to the story that I did not
know. I was unaware of how violently the boy was killed and that the white men
who murdered Till got off the case with no charges.
For those
who know about as much as I did, here is the story. During the summer of 1955,
Emmett Till, a 14-year old boy from Chicago Illinois, came down to Mississippi
to visit family. Till reportedly was in a grocery store on his way to his
relative’s house when he whistled at a white woman. He was unaware that he had
done anything wrong until three days later when two men, the white woman’s
husband and another white man, came to the house that Till was staying at,
grabbed him from his bed, dragged him to a barn, brutally beat him (which
included gouging one of his eyes out), and then shot him in the head. Before
abandoning the scene, the two men connected a 75-pound fan to Till’s neck with
a barbed wire and threw his body into a nearby river. Days later when his body
was discovered, Till’s remains were sent to his mother back to Chicago in a
wooden box nailed shut. She was told to not open the box but she refused. Once
she saw the remains of her son she demanded to have an open casket funeral to
show the world what had been done.
An
all-white jury found the two white men responsible for the murder of Emmett
Till not guilty. However, this story did not just disappear like so many other
killings of blacks had. It is said that this event brought on the modern civil
rights movement. Furthermore though, it was about time that the blacks started making
an example of the monstrous things that whites did. In a documentary about the
story on “youtube,” it was said that, “America could no
longer pretend that lynching’s, the vigilantly murders of blacks, were an
acceptable or inevitable fact of life.” It’s disgusting how inferior whites made
blacks feel, so much to the point where blacks were afraid to stop the horrible
things that whites were doing. But the bravery that Emmett’s mother had, helped
to change all of this.
Here is the documentary from “youtube.”
It’s a good story and easy to make a comment about considering for horrifying
this story is.
Emmett Till’s murder was an absolute tragedy, and yet this tragedy was not an isolated occurrence. Till’s story is representative of so many other African Americans who had to endure the hate and violence thrust upon them because of their race. Till did nothing wrong, yet his playful gesture was used as means to justify the act of his horrific murder. The entire story is morally daunting, yet the most chilling part is that Till’s mother refused to look away from her son’s shredded and tattered remains. Till’s mother wanted to see the racism, injustice, and cruelty laid upon her son and she did with every bruise, broken bone, and torn limb. She requested an open casket to show people the malicious and intolerable acts opposed upon her son, yet she was in turn revealing the acts of hatred opposed upon the African American society as a whole.
ReplyDeleteEmmett Till’s story is one that will never loose its clout. To think that something as simple as a whistle was essentially putting the death nail on a black man’s coffin during the Jim Crow era is still disquieting. The brutality these men exercised expressed the utmost disregard for humanity. It is chilling. This story is an extreme example as to how serious race relations were taken in the South. Not conducting yourself according to the racial guidelines recognized by society at that time could be detrimental to your life. It is sad that the young Emmett Till had to be a poster child for the viciousness of the Jim Crow era. His tragic death opened the eyes of many Americans, black and white alike, to the need for social change.
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