The Unresolved American Equation
The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 lit a fire and a rallying cry for civil rights activism across the US that still burns fiercely today. His story has been told continuously since his death as it symbolizes the visceral hatred that was used to warrant lynchings all over America as well as the systematic failures that allowed his killer to be acquitted by an all-white jury.
Emmett Till, a young boy from Chicago, was visiting his relatives in Money, Mississipi when he made a stop at a local general store. At the time it was believed that Carolyn Bryant, a white woman, was at the store at the same time as Emmett who she said flirted or whistled at her. However, since then she has recanted her statement and stated to Timothy B. Tyson, a historian from North Carolina, that “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him.”
Four days after Emmett’s trip to the grocery store, Carolyn Bryant’s husband and half brother took Emmett from his relative’s house, beat him, shot him, and then strung barbed wire and a 75-pound Cotton Gin around his neck before throwing his lifeless body into the Tallahatchie River.
His killers were acquited by an all-white jury but later confessed to the murder via a magazine article in exchange for $4,000.
The lynching of Emmett Till was one of many during this time. However, his mother Mamie Till did not let her son’s death go unnoticed. After he was pulled from the river, local authorities wanted to bury his body right away. His mother would not allow this, saying “let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like.” He was transported back to Chicago where he laid in an open casket for the world to see his mutilated, hardly recognizable body. This galvanized the civil rights movement for the 20th century and continued to be a source of exposing blatant racism today.
A sign stands at Graball Landing were Emmett Till’s body was believed to have been pulled from the river. The sign, in its fourth rendition, is now bulletproof. This site is supposed to stand as a reminder of the racial hatred that once plagued our country and to remember and honour Emmett Till. Instead, this is a site of a continued battle for equality and peace.
Since the memorial sign was placed it has been a target of vandalism and racist propaganda. The letters ‘KKK’ have been stray painted across the sign, the sign has been blasted with bullets, and it has been stolen. When the fourth sign was unveiled in October, it was created out of 500
pounds of bulletproof steel and a new surveillance system has been installed to protect the memorial.
The struggle to have a peaceful memorial site for Emmett Till signifies the still very intense racial divide in the Mississipi delta as well as across the US as a whole. A Gallup poll on race relations in the US shows a sharp decline in the amount of non-Hispanic whites and blacks who believe race relations are either ‘very good’ or ‘somewhat good.’ In 2013, 72% of Non-Hispanic whites indicated that race relations were ‘very good’ to ‘somewhat good,’ compared to 45% in 2015. Among whites and blacks, the outlook on race relations has been in overall decline throughout the 2000s. Starting the century off around 70% with a positive outlook and around 40% in 2018.
Historian David Tell, of the University of Kentucky, discusses the place that Emmett Till still occupies in the civil rights movement. He states that memorials, “have become the new lunch counters,” explaining that lunch counters across the South were “where our country worked out its racial politics.”
Emmett Till was murdered about a year after Brown v. Board of Education ruled that public schools must be desegregated. This give and take, one step forward... two steps back has plagued the US’s attempt to solve the great looming equation of America.
Racism in America today is far more confusing than it ever has been. There is obvious racism in the form of white men, in white pointy hat robes, marching around and burning crosses, but there is also the endless ambiguity surrounding monuments and odes to those who held a place in American history but also owned slaves.
The nature of American politics has turned many issues, including race issues into a matter of tribal instinct, as illustrated by Mo Elleithee of Georgetown University. When the President tweeted for the four women of colour in Congress to, “‘go back’ to ‘fix’ what he called the “totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came,” the House Democrats banded together going on record to say that the President’s tweet was in fact racist. The House Republicans also stood by each other doing the opposite - saying nothing.
Americans are smart enough to see recognize racism when we see it, argues Michael Steele, an African-American and former Republican national chairman. However, he also raises the very important point, “we need to be very careful about applying those terms to people and situations,” Mr Steele says, “because you undermine the very important value of them for when you need to call the thing what it is.”
The brutal murder of Emmett Till and the continued assault on his memorial is blatant racism. I will go as far as to argue that the rhetoric of our nation’s leaders has the profound ability to instigate and give permission to ongoing acts of racism. We have seen the rallying cries of civil rights activists being met with equal force from the KKK and white nationalists. While the death of Emmett Till was over 60 years ago, the same hatred that took his life seen today at the battleground for peace that is his memorial.
