An ongoing illustrative history study
This piece originally posted 1/29/2023
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"That is, after all, how it works. We don't come here with hatred in our hearts. We have to be taught to feel that way. We have to want to be that way, to please the people who teach us to want to be like them. Strange, to think that people might learn to hate as a way of getting some approval, some acceptance, some love. I thought about all that."
Double biography today. And even a cursory glance at this weekend's headlines will make fairly obvious why I chose to talk about these two people.
Born in 1941 Chicago, Emmett Till was 14 years old when, on August 24, 1955, he was kidnapped and tortured to death by a white mob in Money, Mississippi for the never-proven "crime" of flirting with a white woman. His mutilated body was retrieved from the Tallahatchie River three days later. His mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, made the agonizing decision for her son's bloated, mutilated body to be displayed in an open casket funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, in Chicago. Thousands of people lined up to view the body and more than 50,000 mourners attended the funeral service. The resultant media coverage threw a spotlight on extrajudicial lynchings in the U.S., and forced a greater public discourse on segregation, racial violence, and systemic inequality.
In September of that year Till's accused murderers were ultimately acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury after only 67 minutes' deliberation. Four months later the accused murderers openly admitted to the crime to journalist William Bradford Huie, in an article that would then appear in the Jan. 24, 1956 edition of Look magazine. This article's publication was in many respects a clarion call to justice for many grassroots and local activists, kickstarting the Modern Civil Rights Movement.
Mamie Till-Bradley continued to advocate for social and racial justice for the rest of her life, never passing up an opportunity to educate about the circumstances of her son's murder right on up until her death in 2003. While Till's story remains a part of the American public consciousness (even directly informing the underlying plot of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird), the details tend to become lost to time --glossed over, sanitized. Of late this has been notably mitigated, with 2022's airing of the miniseries Women of the Movement on ABC, featuring Adrienne Warren as Mamie Till-Bradley. In March of 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, and this past October the feature film Till premiered in theaters, directed by Chinonye Chukwu and starring Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Bradley. One attendee at the notorious 1955 trial was future State Sen. David Jordan (D-Greenwood), who successfully sponsored the commissioning of a bronze statue of Emmett Till, unveiled in October of 2022 at Rail Spike Park.
(Read "What Emmett Till's Mother Taught Me About Grief and Justice" by Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin.)
Bottom line here: Emmett Till's story has pointedly NOT vanished into invisibility and obscurity, unlike a great many other lynchings and massacres. But the larger issue is more primal: Emmett Till should still be alive, today --he should be comfortably just into his eighties, possibly enjoying the company of grandchildren. And to pull that very same thread, Amadou Diallo should still be alive; Trayvon Martin should still be alive; Breonna Taylor should still be alive --they should all be into their late-twenties, possibly settling into a career, perhaps starting families of their own.
Tyre Nichols should still be alive.
Incidentally, these biographies all now have a permanent home, rather than subject themselves to arbitrary throttling-down at the murky whims of various social media. Safer and more sensible that way, especially since so many states (mine included, unfortunately) have redoubled their efforts to ensure that this subject matter stays out of school curricula. New to this series? Go here to start the lessons: http://www.petervintonjr.com/blm/start.html
Black History Month kicking off in a few more days, my friends. More biographies and accompanying art, still to come. I feel as though I keep repeating this, but: we've a lot still to learn. So go study.
Next page - Lesson 111: Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins