Fannie Lou Hamer of Ruleville, Miss., was strongly influenced by the murder of young Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till on Aug. 28, 1955. She would become a major civil rights advocate who worked especially hard at voting rights.
With the anniversary of Emmett Till’s brutal murder coming up Aug. 28, taking a second look at Till's death and trial of the men who killed him (finding them innocent) gives us pause.
Why do we still talk about this murder? Wasn't Till just a kid from Chicago who went to Mississippi, got into trouble, and because of Jim Crow, was killed?
Why, some 56 years later, do people still bring this up? Aren't Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King more important in history? Was Till even involved in civil rights? Could his story end up (finally) as a Hollywood film? Would the topic simply be treated as another "The Help" or would truth be told?
These are questions I'm often asked when giving talks about Emmett Till. They are good questions that deserve some answers. So here goes (and remember, I want to hear your comments, too)--
1)Till’s murder represents, at least, the unofficial start of the modern civil rights movement.
Emmett Till’s murder resulted in a spark of indignation that ignited protests around the world. Think about it – a 14-year-old out-of-state visitor’s murder actually set off a world-wide uproar and cast a world spotlight on Mississippi's (and to some degree, this entire country’s) racism.
This case, through its constant news coverage and oral telling of the story, soon began to represent the total lack of justice for blacks in the South. More importantly, the telling of this story in the local, region, state and world press, as well as the oral telling of Till’s murder
2) Ignited people to action – many of whom, until then, had been safely sitting on the civil rights sidelines.
For example, The Chicago Defender in 1955 urged their readers to react to the acquittal by voting in large numbers. This resulted in more awareness of the difficulties that had to be overcome to register and vote.
Eight years later, in 1963, Sunflower County resident Fannie Lou Hamer, herself a sharecropper, was jailed and beaten for attempting to register to vote. The next year, she led a massive voter registration drive in the Delta region.
Hamer knew the story of Emmett Till, quite well, because it happened near her Ruleville home. She was also raised with the story of an earlier murder in 1917, also in Drew where Till was taken and beaten, of a sharecropper who was lynched by a mob of over 1,000. His murder was covered by the national press, a first for such events in Mississippi.
Before 1954, 265 black people were registered to vote in the Delta although they represented 41% of the population. The summer Emmett Till was killed, no blacks were registered in the Delta.
The Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964 registered 63,000 black voters and they were required to form their own political party because they were forbidden from joining the established parties in Mississippi.
3) The Civil Rights Act of 1957, primarily a voting rights bill proposed by President Dwight Eisenhower, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction and Till’s death clearly influenced this legislation.
The widow of Medgar Evers (the state NAACP leader who was later assassinated in Mississippi, would say that Till's case resonated so strongly because
4) Till’s murder shook "the foundations of Mississippi, both black and white—with the white community because it had become nationally publicized, with blacks, because it said not even a child was safe from racism and bigotry and death.
We know this event had impact. For instance, the NAACP asked Mamie Till Bradley to tour the country relating the events of her son's life, death, and the trial of his murderers. It was one of the most successful fundraising campaigns the NAACP had ever experienced.
5) Till's death has been formally reported to be the start of what has been called the "Negro revolt" and Till has been called by a major black historian, Weems, as the "sacrificial lamb" for civil rights.
NAACP operative Amzie Moore believed Till’s murder initiated the Civil Rights Movement, at the very least, in Mississippi.
The 1987 14-hour Emmy award-winning documentary Eyes on the Prize that exhaustively encompass the major figures and events of the Civil Rights Movement, begin with the murder of Emmett Till.
In Mississippi, Till’s murder resulted in more news coverage and examination, to some degree. From this time on, the slightest racial incident anywhere in the state was spotlighted and magnified.
Of course, attitudes about the murder quickly changed, with many white people in Mississippi coming up with justifications, such as Till being like his father who was put to death by the U.S. military for raping a woman overseas. There is now much historical argument over what really took place – since a number of black soldiers met this fate, as well.
To blacks throughout the South and to some extent in other parts of the country,
6) this verdict indicated an end to the system of noblesse oblige.
The misplaced trust and faith that many blacks had in the white power structure finally declined.
7) The revolt officially began on December 1, 1955, with the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.
While white people are still just hearing this story, especially in the North, it was having an immediate and enormous impact in the black community. In Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white bus rider, sparking a year-long well-organized grassroots boycott of the public bus system, designed to force the city to change their segregation policies.
Parks later said when she did not get up and move to the rear of the bus, "I thought of Emmett Till and I just couldn't go back.”
(Do you remember being taught in your history classes that Rosa Parks was just tired after a hard day of work and made this decision on her own?)
8) Till's death and the widespread coverage of the students integrating Little Rock Central High School only two years later in 1957 were especially profound for younger blacks. These two events brought an awareness of earlier isolated protests that the sit-ins of the 1960s were born.
Emmett Till continues to be the focus of literature and memorials.
--A statue was unveiled in Denver in 1976 (and has since been moved to Pueblo, Colorado) featuring Till with Martin Luther King, Jr.
--Till was included among the forty names of people who had died in the Civil Rights Movement (listed as martyrs[103]) on the granite sculpture of the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama, dedicated in 1989.
--Mamie Till-Mobley attended many of the dedications for the memorials, including a demonstration in Selma, Alabama on the 35th anniversary of the march over the Edmund Pettis Bridge.
She later wrote in her memoirs, "I realized that Emmett had achieved the significant impact in death that he had been denied in life. Even so, I had never wanted Emmett to be a martyr. I only wanted him to be a good son. Till-Mobley died in 2003, the same year her memoirs were published.
--The Emmett TillHighway" was dedicated between Greenwood and Tutwiler, Mississippi, the same route his body took to the train station on its way to Chicago. It intersects with the H. C. "Clarence" Strider Memorial Highway. Unfortunately, the highway sign has been repeatedly vandalized.
--In 2007, Tallahatchie County issued a formal apology to Till's family
--In the same year, John Lewis, whose skull was fractured while being beaten during the 1965 Selma march, sponsored a bill that provides a plan for investigating and prosecuting unsolved Civil Rights era murders. The Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act was signed into law in 2008.
--On July 9, 2009, a manager and three laborers at Burr Oak Cemetery were charged with digging up bodies, dumping them in a remote area, and reselling the plots. Till's grave was not disturbed, but investigators found his original glass-topped casket rusting in a dilapidated storage shed.
When Till was reburied in a new casket in 2005, there were plans for an Emmett Till memorial museum, where his original casket would be installed. The cemetery manager, who administered the memorial fund, pocketed donations intended for the memorial. It is unclear how much money was collected and the current thought is that the money is no longer available and the museum will not be built, unless a large donor steps up with the fund.
Cemetery officials also neglected the casket, which was discolored, the interior fabric torn, and bore evidence that animals had been living in it, although its glass top was still intact.
--The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. acquired the casket a month later.
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Coming up on the 56th anniversary of Emmett Till's murder in Mississippi, I am honestly angry at myself that I had to move to the heart of the Delta to learn this important piece of American history.
Okay. My high school and college history days go back to the 60s, well before this event was talked about or written about in the white community – except for newspaper accounts.
At least this is my major excuse. Even though I did enjoy moving to the Mississippi Delta and meeting so many wonderful people -- an experience I will always hold dear.
Further, I was raised in the North where civil rights history is largely ignored – and still is today. We think we know it all in the North, but we engage in defacto segregation (that operates like a caste system, but is not legally protected) and don’t admit to our problems or have much dialogue in our schools and churches.
Many Northerners still see civil rights, racism and discrimination as Southern issues. The Civil War WAS their fault, afterall, any decent New Englander, related to a ship-builder who made money off the slave trade, might say...
A bit of history -- The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 or 1877 and 1965. They required racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. Naturally, this led to mistreatment and poor accommodations that were inferior to that provided for white Americans and resulted in a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.
Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms, restaurants and drinking fountains for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated.
State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education.
Remember, that Emmett Till came into Mississippi the following year, after Brown II, that really set off the South. In Brown II, it was mandated that school desegregation occur with all deliberate speed. The atmosphere was ripe for his murder. and in fact, a well-known minister was murdered in nearby Belzoni for voting rights activities, shortly before Till came to visit relatives.
Another man was murdered on a courthouse lawn, for the same reason, soon after Till was killed.
Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
You will see remnants today of Jim Crow laws when restaurant owners put up signs they have the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason. In fact, they do not have this right and I see these signs as highly offensive and sometimes embarrass friends and family members when I point them out to the business owner.
Anyway, after working hard, reading and speaking to people from the Delta, I am further amazed and sometimes disgusted when I talk to a white historian, anthropologist or teacher who has never heard of this crime, or maybe has heard the name but remains unfamiliar with the story.
Here’s a personal example: Last summer, I was given the opportunity to educate the head of the anthropology department of a very prestigious university on Till. This white professor knew nothing about him, even though she lived near Chicago; she said she had heard his name mentioned, but that was all.
This person is internationally known for her research, and still didn’t know this history. She was embarrassed, after we talked, and said that she will make certain that her future students know this story – one that still serves as a cautionary tale in the black community.
I know that she will follow through -- this story is just too important to forget.
