What About Emmett Till?

I’m always amazed at how America ranks its national heroes. Since President Ronald Reagan’s 1983 bill-signing and Pres. George H.W. Bush’s 1992 proclamation, all 50 states have used this day to honor Martin Luther King Jr. for his leadership and sacrifice during the modern civil rights movement. Today will give way to a month  of focusing on black history and folks like Rosa Parks. Despite all these remembrances, speeches and textbooks across the country will continue to ignore the most important spark that motivated these honored icons.

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In 1954, a 14-year-old boy left Chicago for a trip to Mississippi. Within a few days, he was abducted and brutally murdered for “talking fresh” to a white woman. This “violation” consisted of little more than a light-hearted whistle and a wink. His killers, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, beat and shot him then attached a cotton gin fan to the body with barbed wire and sank the corpse in the Tallahatchie River. A local boy found the body three days later.

Emmett’s mother Mamie, another strong woman often left out of the history books, ordered the caretaker to open the coffin. Horrific sights and smells escaped. She then demanded that no attempt be made to fix her boy. The funeral would be open casket. The pictures were also run by Jet magazine and are easy enough to find with Google but be forewarned if you don’t handle that type of thing well.

The impact of the images and assistance of media helped bring the story into a national light by September 1955 when the trial took place. In a segregated courtroom, eyewitnesses identified the accused men. The jury listened to the testimony but also heard the judge say, “I’m sure every last Anglo-Saxon one of you has the courage to free these men.” They did and even took an hour to grab a cola across the street before delivering the verdict. Not guilty.

Shortly after the trial, Milam and Bryant accepted $4,000 each to give the true account of what really happened. Thanks to our double jeopardy law, they could not be tried again even upon admitting guilt. In a blow-by-blow account, they detailed the murder including how enraged they became when Emmett refused to properly fear them. Blacks and civil rights supporters were outraged. They took action.