Existing comment:
Reckoning with Remembrance:
History, Injustice, and the Murder of Emmett Till
"Emmett Till was my George Floyd. He was my Rayshard Brooks, Sandra Bland, and Breonna Taylor. . . . [H]e could easily have been me."
-- Congressman John Lewis, July 2020
Emmett Till
On August 20, 1955, Mamie Till-Mobley waved goodbye as her 14-year-old son Emmett, boarded a train to visit family in Mississippi. Just eight days later, her child was lynched. Two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, kidnapped Emmett from his bed and forced him into the back of a track. They, along with others, later brutally beat, shot, and mutilated Emmett. His body was then thrown into the Tallahatchie River with a cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Emmett's offense was whistling at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant.
Mamie Till-Mobley made the decision to have an open casket funeral to "Let the people see what they did to my boy." Emmett's death sparked a revolution, galvanizing civil rights activists to act with courage, boldness, and determination.
Emmett and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, Christmas 1954
Emmett grew up in Summit, Illinois, where he was protected and nurtured by a robust community that knew him as a jokester. |