Emmett Till Blog; Murder in the Mississippi Delta; Civil Rights Cold Cases

This month in history; Emmett Till article released by Look Magazine

2012-01-25T13:00:00.003-06:00

On Jan. 24, 1956, a major publication, Look magazine published an article in which two white men from Mississippi, confessed to brutally murdering 14-year-old Emmett Till, a Black teen from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi.

From the Land of Emmett Till: Courthouse across the Cassidy bayou in Sumner, Mississippi (where the trial of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant took place in September of 1955 for the murder of Emmett Till). Young Till was visiting relatives in Money, Miss. when he was murdered outside of the cotton town of Drew for allegedly whistling at a white woman. After Milam and Bryant were found innocent, Rosa Parks took her stance in Alabama, by refusing to sit at the back of a city bus. Later, she said she was deeply affected by the 14-year-old's murder. Historians now say that Till's murder was the spark that ignited Parks and the modern civil rights movement. (Photo by Susan Klopfer)

The year before, on August 1955, Till allegedly whistled at a white woman, the wife of a gas station and small market owner, while he was buying candy inside, prompting J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant ‘s brutal attack several days later, in early morning hours.

In the magazine article, the men revealed how the kidnapped Till, beat him, shot him and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River, using a heavy cotton-gin fan attached with barbed wire to his neck to weigh him down. Earlier in September 1955, the two men had been acquitted by an all-white jury, all-male jury after a five day trial. But much of the details presented by the two men in Look were later questioned by various reporters and researchers.

More on the Emmett Till Story … (details by the author of Who Killed Emmett Till?)

The Emmett Till Funeral: An Open Look at American Hatred

2012-01-03T18:12:00.005-06:00

The Emmett Till Funeral: An Open Look at American Hatred

By Guest Author, Becky Wilcox

Mamie Till Bradley, the mother of Emmett Till, weeps during her son's funeral. (Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Historical Images)

(Editor's Note: If you are interested in reading more about the murder of Emmett Till, you can receive a special discount on Susan Klopfer's books at Lulu.com. Use coupon code LULUBOOK305 at checkout and receive 25% off your order. The maximum savings with this promotion is $50. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer ends on January 31, 2012 at 11:59 PM PST. )

MOST HISTORIANS AND SCHOLARS of the African-American Civil Rights Movement cite the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till as the spark that ignited the firestorm. But the impact the murder of Emmett Till had on American society in 1955 would not have dug as deep a crater as it did if it weren't for the quick thinking and boldness of Emmett's mother, Mamie Till, in the days following her son's death. Without her unwavering insistence that her son's body be brought back home north to Chicago, and her decision to show the world what was done to her son, Till's death could have slipped into the silence of criminal statistics. Indeed, it was the unfortunate death of this young man that galvanized an already existing movement to improve the lives of African-Americans, but only because Mamie Till made it her mission to do so at a time in her life when most mothers wouldn't be able to stand up, let alone fight.

Bringing Her Boy Home
When she heard the news of her son's death, Mamie Till was hundreds of miles away from where the crime occurred – up in Chicago while her son stayed with relatives in Mississippi for the summer. This distance would prove daunting in the days ahead, as local authorities in Mississippi insisted that Emmett's body be buried there and not sent to Chicago. The extent of Emmett's injuries were not yet known by his mother, as no post-mortem examination on the body had been performed. Fearing that the revelation of his injuries would cause controversy, Mississippi authorities attempted to essentially bury the evidence.

But Mamie Till did not go down easy. She contacted every state office and government support line she could to ensure that a local burial would be prevented and that Emmett's body would indeed be sent to a chosen Chicago mortuary. When her son's body arrived in Chicago, Mamie Till said that the smell of decomposition could be detected blocks away due to the time it took to clear the red tape in preventing a Mississippi burial.

Showing the World What They Did to Her Baby
When Mamie Till made the positive identification of Emmett's body, she made one of the most important decisions of her life in deciding to have an open casket service. Emmett had been brutally beaten about the head and face to the point that he was virtually unrecognizable. It was a horrific sight to behold, and one no mother should ever have to experience. But not only did Mamie Till refuse to let herself look away, she made up her mind that the world wasn't going to look away either.

Through connections courtesy of the NAACP and growing controversy over the issue in Mississippi, Mamie Till ensured that there was press coverage of Emmett's funeral service. Photographs taken of the body made the rounds, and Americans could not stomach what they saw. Even the majority of pro-segregationist Southern whites were appalled at the way Emmett met his end. Proponents of equality for blacks refused to let the story die, and in the days and weeks afterward, Emmett Till's death became a rallying cry for the movement.

Bittersweet Results
Emmett's murderers never paid for their crimes and died free men after a jury found them not guilty. They even went on record years later admitting to the crime, while the double jeopardy provision of the American court system prevented any further attempts of prosecution.

But if this deeply dark cloud had any shred of a silver lining, it was that the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till turned out to be the last straw when it came to tolerated racial injustice in the United States. This was thanks to the efforts of Emmett's mother, who in her desire for the world to know the truth about his death, ended up helping improve the lives of millions.

AUDIO SAMPLE FROM "WHO KILLED EMMETT TILL"

(Author Becky Wilcox writes the she was "just doing some research and I came across the open casket topic. As I read more about the topic I became more and more interested." Becky is a freelance writer who in her spare time loves to learn about the topics of education, technology and history. She notes that the Civil Rights Movement has always been a longtime passion of hers. Thanks, Becky, for sharing this article. Susan Klopfer, blog editor)

(Editor's Note: If you are interested in reading more about the murder of Emmett Till, you can receive a special discount on Susan Klopfer's books at Lulu.com. Use coupon code LULUBOOK305 at checkout and receive 25% off your order. The maximum savings with this promotion is $50. You can only use the code once per account, and you can't use this coupon in combination with other coupon codes. This great offer ends on January 31, 2012 at 11:59 PM PST. )

From the Land of Emmett Till: My Favorite Mississippi Christmas Story -- Boycotts Work!

2011-12-19T15:23:00.000-06:00

I appreciate this story that comes out of Mississippi, from the modern civil rights movement, and tell it often -- especially this time of the year.

As 1961 came to a close, some white folks in the Mississippi Delta were dreaming of a White Christmas when they decided to keep their black customers away from the city of Clarksdale's annual parade.

Now this might sound mean-spirited, but the black people had already learned of their parade position -- at the end of the line, after all of the white floats and bands passed by.

Once they heard where their parade position was to be, Coahoma County's NAACP chapter led by civil rights activist Aaron Henry sponsored a major boycott over the Christmas shopping season of 1961. Here is the story as it appeared in a recent online magazine interview:

"Clarksdale's downtown stores were all heavily dependent on black trade, giving the boycott both immediate and lasting effects," civil rights author, Susan Klopfer said.

Medgar Evers, head of the state NAACP, and Henry had met that summer with with President John F. Kennedy during the NAACP convention in Philadelphia, talking with Kennedy and others over the severity of their problems.

Then two months later, shortly after their meeting, Clarksdale's mayor decided there would be “no Negro participation” in the annual Christmas parade, and his decision would result in the first major confrontation in Clarksdale since 1955, according to Klopfer.

“Henry and others were stunned and affronted by the mayor's edict. It was tradition for the black band to play at the end of the parade, followed by floats from their community. There seemed to be no reason for this decision, except that the mayor apparently resented the progress African Americans were making all over the state.”

Henry and Evers called for a boycott of downtown stores with a slogan stating if they couldn't parade downtown, they wouldn't trade downtown.

Handbills were printed and a newsletter sent out asking for blacks to join in the boycott; merchants felt pressure from the start.

"The white community leaders would not come to terms with the black community and the boycott dragged on,” Klopfer said.

Aaron Henry "voiced the black community's view" when he said it could go on forever unless there were real changes in hiring practices.

When the county's attorney Thomas H. (Babe) Pearson threatened to jail Henry if he didn’t use his influence to call off the boycott, Henry would not budge, so Pearson called out for Clarksdale Police Chief Ben Collins to come out from the side room of his office, and told him to “take this nigger to jail.”

The arrest was illegal, Klopfer states, since no warrant was issued, "but Henry knew better not to argue with an armed policeman. He could have been killed for such dissent.”

Years later, "Henry admitted he didn't mind going to jail at the time, since he knew it would result in an intensification of the boycott--and it did.”

Seven more Clarksdale civil rights leaders were brought in and all were locked up, later charged with restraint of trade and released. The boycott reached its peak about three years later, following passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and merchants felt the economic pinch throughout the event as they missed one-half of their customers, Klopfer said.

Yet even while Henry and others were being arrested, another group -- all white -- tried launching a boycott of their own when the Mississippi State Legislature passed a resolution that no loyal Mississippian should shop in Memphis, Tennessee, just across the state line, and quite close to Clarksdale, Klopfer said.

“Tougaloo College professor John Salter, a dedicated civil rights activist, wrote about the Clarksdale boycott, noting that while public accommodations and other facilities in Memphis were quietly desegregating, the Mississippi legislature further distinguished itself, ‘...by publicly investigating conditions at the University Hospital in Jackson, where white and black children were leaving their segregated wards and playing together in the corridors’.”

Few people today have read about the Clarkdale boycott, Klopfer admits.

But others have learned in their history books -- or were alive at the time -- when six years earlier, African-Americans in Alabama launched a boycott of the bus system in Montgomery after local civil rights activist Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white rider.

“Parks 1955 decision came soon after the trial freeing the murderers of Emmett Till, an African American 14-year-old Illinois school boy who was killed in the Mississippi Delta for allegedly whistling at white women,” Klopfer said.

Given that African-Americans constituted a large part of the bus ridership, history books show the boycott hurt Montgomery’s revenue base.

“People found alternative ways to get to work and school, and the boycott drew national attention. Even some northerners supported the boycott and gave donations."

Both Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph Abernathy, who would remain at the forefront of the struggle through the 1960s, "emerged at this time.”

The Montgomery boycott ended in 1956 when the Supreme Court declared that the segregated transit system was unconstitutional.

“From this history and their own, Hispanics know that boycotts have proven effective in their quest for labor justice and union rights.” Klopfer said.

In 1965, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, led by Cesar Chavez, launched a national boycott against grapes.

“The five-year boycott, or la huelga, placed enormous pressure on California grape growers to recognize the union and it drew national attention to the plight of unorganized immigrant workers in low-paying and dangerous jobs,” Klopfer said.

Meanwhile, boycotts still carry a threat in the Delta, according to the civil rights author.

“Citizens in the small town of Cleveland, near the site where Emmett Till was killed in 1955, threatened an Easter boycott just last month over an issue involving school segregation. One thousand school children marched from their building to administrative offices."

Klopfer says the school board listened -- "at least for this particular demand" -- and gave in, after board members were told of an impending boycott.

“Boycotts carry weight and politicians should be taking seriously the response to Arizona’s new law, if they value lessons learned from history.”

###

Susan Klopfer is the author of three civil rights books, including "Who Killed Emmett Till?" "The Emmett Till Book" and "Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited." She is an award-winning journalist and has been an acquisitions and development editor for Prentice Hall. She is the author of a Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection and is a public speaker, freelance writer and active blogger.

List of civil rights-era cases remaining open, according to Justice Department - Update of Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act (Cold Case Initiative)

2011-11-09T11:42:00.007-06:00

The gravesite of Louis Allen, killed in Mississippi, Jan. 31, 1964

Heading the list of civil rights-era cases remaining officially open by the U.S. Dept. of Justice is the murder of Mississippian Louis Allen, who was killed on Jan. 31, 1964.

Under its “Cold Case Initiative” and the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, the Justice Department has selected such deaths that occurred during the civil rights era to review for possible prosecution.

For most of the 124 deaths re-examined, investigators issued findings that no further action could be taken, but has also listed some 39 cases to remain officially open, including the Allen murder.

Squeaky Wheel

Family members of Allen, a Liberty resident shot to death 43 years ago in have offered $20,000 for information leading to the arrest of his killers.

Allen's namesake grandson, Louis Allen Jr., said family members suspect the killer is alive and that other people were involved.

The Allen case has been one of more than 100 civil rights-era slaying under investigation by the Department of Justice. Louis Allen Jr. said he hopes the reward offered by the Mississippi Religious Leadership Conference will spark more interest in finding justice for his grandfather.

Efforts to solve the case gained steam, following prosecutions in other civil rights-era cold cases, including two life sentences handed down this summer to James Ford Seale of Roxie in the May 2, 1964, kidnapping of Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore. The teens were beaten and drowned.

(The Allen family has reportedly not been pleased with the FBI's lack of progress on the case, a family spokesman once told me.)

Meanwhile, others remaining on the Open List are

2. Frank Andrews , Lisman, Ala., murdered Nov. 28, 1964.

3. Isadore Banks, Marion, Ark. — June 8, 1964.

4. Benjamin Brown , Jackson, Miss. — May 11, 1967.

5. Carrie Brumfield, Franklinton, La. — Sept. 12, 1967.

6. Johnnie Mae Chappell, Jacksonville, Fla. — March 23, 1964.

7. James Chaney, Philadelphia, Miss. — June 21, 1964.

8. George Dorsey, Monroe, Ga. — July 25, 1946.

9. Mae Dorsey, Monroe, Ga. — July 25, 1946.

10. Joseph Edwards, Vidalia, Miss. — July 12, 1964.

11. Willie Edwards, Montgomery, Ala. — Jan. 23, 1957.

12. Andrew Goodman, Philadelphia, Miss. — June 21, 1964.

13. Mattie Greene, Ringgold, Ga. — May 20, 1965.

14. Jimmie Lee Griffin, Sturgis, Miss. — Sept. 24, 1965.

15. Paul Guihard, Oxford, Miss. — Sept. 30, 1962.

16. A.C. Hall, Macon, Ga. — Oct. 11, 1962.

17. Rogers Hamilton, Lowndes County, Ala. — Oct. 22, 1957.

18. Samuel Hammond, Orangeburg, S.C. — Feb. 8, 1968.

19. Isaiah Henry, Greensburg, La. — July 28, 1954.

20. Wharlest Jackson, Natchez, Miss. — Feb. 27, 1967.

21. Dorothy Malcom, Monroe, Ga. — July 25, 1946.

22. Roger Malcom, Monroe, Ga. — July 25, 1946.

23. Delano Middleton, Orangeburg, S.C. — Feb. 8, 1968.

24. Booker T. Mixon, Clarksdale, Miss. — Sept. 12, 1959.

25. Oneal Moore, Varnado, La. — June 2, 1965.

26. William Moore, Attalla, Ala. — April 23, 1963.

27. Frank Morris, Ferriday, La. — Dec. 10, 1964.

28. Claude Neal, Greenwood, Fla. — Oct. 26, 1934.

29. Samuel O’Quinn, Centreville, Miss. — Aug. 14, 1959.

30. Mack Charles Parker, Pearl River County, Miss. — May 4, 1959.

31. Jimmy Powell, New York, N.Y. — July 16, 1964.

32. William Roy Prather, Corinth, Miss. — Oct. 31, 1959.

33. Johnny Queen, Fayette, Miss. — Aug. 8, 1965.

34. Fred Robinson, Edisto Island, S.C. — Aug. 5, 1960.

35. Willie Joe Sanford, Hawkinsville, Ga. — March 1, 1957.

36. Michael Schwerner, Philadelphia, Miss. — June 21, 1964.

37. Marshall Scott, New Orleans — January 1965.

38. Henry Smith, Orangeburg, S.C. — Feb. 8, 1968.

39. Clifton Walker, Woodville, Miss. — Feb. 29, 1964.
* * * * *

Some related Sovereignty Commission files on Allen can be viewed on my separate blog (Click Here).

But for now, it is a shame that Justice has not taken time to examine the murders of Birdia Keglar and Adlena Hamlett. I will be discussing their murders and the murders of the 39 people listed in this newest report over the next few weeks.

Susan

From the Land of Emmett Till: Review of Jackson, Mississippi (John R. Salter, Jr.)

2011-10-06T18:57:00.001-05:00

Real History – You Know It When You Read It

(Jackson, Mississippi. An American Chronicle of Struggle and Schism. John R. Salter, Jr. First copyright date, 1979. Introduction 2011 by John Hunter Gray. Nonfiction. History of the Jackson, Mississippi modern civil rights movement. Published by the University of Nebraska Press, bisonbooks.com. First published by Exposition Press. ISBN 978-0-8032-3808-4. US $18.95.)

By Susan Klopfer, author of Who Killed Emmett Till? and Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.

Summary: Above all, Jackson, Mississippi is an organizer’s book; it was written by a sociologist participant observer and centers on the development and life of the Jackson modern civil rights movement. (The person who wrote this book was there!) Today as we listen to news reports on the Occupation Wall Street protest, covered by Amy Goodman and a few other good reporters, while following along on Twitter and Facebook, this book is a critical read for those who want to learn how effective protest really works. Author and sociologist, John Salter, is an experienced and successful advocate and organizer who knows from the bottom of his soul how to agitate for social justice. Salter has been doing this since the mid-1950s (around the time of the murder of Emmett Till). This newest work introduces critical autobiographical material, particularly on the personal factors that initially led to his embracing of social protest and updates the flow of events since his first book that appeared thirty-one years ago when he was living on the Navajo Nation, outside of Gallup, New Mexico. He shares his knowledge and ever-growing philosophies from his present point of residence in the mountains of eastern Idaho.
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SOME PEOPLE IN life, you just know. Even if you really do not know them in person, and probably could not pick him or her out in a police line-up, there is a spark, a kindred spirit that flows between the both of you when you share a common passion. John R. Salter Jr., a brave and courageous American Indian who lives high in the mountains over Pocatello, Idaho, and I have this wonderful type of relationship, communicating solely via email over the past eight years regarding Mississippi’s civil rights history. Ironically, we also have some interesting geographical connections, linking us individually to various communities in Mississippi, Iowa and New Mexico, all places where we have each spent time in our personal and professional lives.

Salter, who typically identifies himself as Hunter Gray or Hunter Bear, owing to his Native American origins, impresses most who know him as an amazing individual – and I can support this, even if I have never talked to him in person, because of the intriguing keyboard conversations we have engaged in on the Internet. Thank God for email and blogging! I first “met” John while researching the Mississippi modern civil rights movement and after reading his first book that he wrote in 1979 about the Jackson movement, in particular. The authenticity of his work is what struck me, because Salter is an academic sociologist who was actually there, on the front lines, giving him the ability to weave the story so accurately and with such passionate detail. Just as soon as I opened his book back in 2003 and started reading the foreword, I knew that I was hooked, and could not put this book down until I finished the last page. Then, I contacted him via email. Salter later contributed a warm piece on Medgar Evers for the book that I was writing about the Mississippi Delta.

Salter’s Jackson, Mississippi carries on the author’s dedication to giving readers a fierce and passionate retelling of exactly what happened during this bloody cultural revolution of the Deep South in the 1960s, an intriguing period of history that brought together some of the most brilliant and brave Americans, well-known civil rights icons, such as Evers and Martin Luther King Jr., or quieter people who played key, critical roles including Aaron Henry, Rev. Ed King, Charles McDew, Colia and Lewis Liddel, and Bill Higgs. Salter personally knew and worked with all of these and other activists who valiantly sought change.

Salter was right there, on one of the major civil rights firing lines, employed as a professor by Tougaloo Southern Christian College, the private and almost entirely African American school just north of the state capital, an institution with its own significant, historical past. At Tougaloo, the sociologist advised the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, a post that grew into his impassioned involvement in the Jackson movement, not surprising, since activism and leadership are woven into Salter’s genetic makeup, coming from generations of social and political activism on both sides of his family. Salter further has the special ability to tell these critical stories so utterly well because he is a social scientist and in this case, he was a participant observer; his observations checkmate those of us who write of this period but must rely solely upon the words of others.

Forget the movies. Forget The Help. The civil rights movement in those years cannot be described as some comfortable, charming time when black house cleaners and white upper social class women worked together to harbinger change, as Hollywood would have paying moviegoers believe. It was not a feel-good time, but was a period of real life struggle when kind, caring and courageous people were hurt badly or even killed as they fought to abolish Jim Crow via demonstrations, boycotts and other hugely, frightening activities. People who tried to force change were not simply arrested and let out on bond, like today’s Wall Street Occupied activists – and this statement is not casually made to downplay, in any way, the brave activities of today’s protesters. However, an arrest in Mississippi of the Deep South, in those years past, could result in a brutal death in an isolated jail cell or prison cell, with the arrestee never to be seen again.

Salter was a frequent target of Mississippi's state-run Sovereignty Commission, a secret state police force operating from 1956 to 1977 whose function was to suppress the civil rights movement and maintain segregation. The commission kept files, harassed and branded many as communist infiltrators, including Salter, via agents who were retired FBI, CIA and military intelligence. No one was safe in Mississippi, especially someone like Salter with his wide influence and knowledge to make change happen. (You can see examples of files kept on Salter by this agency on my Mississippi Sovereignty Commission blog.)

All of Mississippi’s modern civil rights movement, including the activities in Jackson, featured some of the bloodiest resistance encountered throughout the entire movement, led up by “lawmen,” hoodlums, politicians and vigilantes who might or might not have belonged to the Ku Klux Klan. Salter’s book gives a vivid portrayal of Mississippi in those years; his work is a testament to the brilliant, dangerous, and historic actions of civil rights activists witnessed (and and often led) by this sociologist/activist/advisor.

~ ~ ~
Salter had to have known back in 1961, when first coming into Mississippi, the state was a powder keg. Six years earlier, following the United States Supreme Court’s 1955 decision on speeding up the integration of public schools, Brown II, there were numerous violent incidents and murders reflecting Mississippi’s outrage over the court’s audacity to demand the state immediately desegregate. The modern civil rights movement that spread throughout the entire country was in fact sparked by an incident in the Mississippi Delta, a region north of Jackson, after the brutal August murder of a young Chicago 14-year-old, Emmett Till, who at the time was visiting relatives in the in the tiny cotton hamlet of Money.

Young Till, known to be a prankster, was not used to the severity of Mississippi’s Jim Crow violations and playfully flirted with the wife of a white storeowner, Carolyn Bryant. Her husband was out of town, but when he returned home, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. W. Milam, arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they questioned him about the incident, and then took Till to a barn in Sunflower County, outside of Drew, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, across the river from the small town of Glendora. They weighted Till’s body with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. Till’s body floated to the top and was discovered and retrieved from the river three days after the murder.

Till’s body was returned to Chicago by train (despite an attempt by local officials to bury him in Mississippi) where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. Tens of thousands attended this funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body were published in black magazines in the United States and in newspapers read around the world, rallying popular black and white support and sympathy across the U.S.

Till’s murder was a tipping point for international exposure of America’s dirty little secret that had been with this country since Day One. Intense examination focused on the condition of civil rights in Mississippi, as reactions from newspapers in major international cities and Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and socialist publications were very critical of American society. Further coming to the aid of Mrs. Till were heads of major labor unions and the NAACP. The trial also attracted a vast amount of world-wide press attention to the fall trial taking place in a small county courthouse based in Sumner, where Bryant and Milam were quickly acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder. Several months later, protected by double jeopardy, the two men were paid after admitting to killing Till in a national magazine interview.

Till's murder has become noted as one of the leading events that motivated the modern African-American Civil Rights Movement. Mrs. Till and Rosa Parks spoke together on several occasions before and after the murder and trial. Later, Parks wrote that she knew her time to make a move (to sit at the front of a Montgomery city bus), had finally arrived; she had earlier considered the act of civil disobedience but decided to go ahead after the murder of Till and the acquittal of the men who killed him.

When I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2004, problems with the 1955 trial leading to Bryant's and Milam's acquittals led to the official reopening of the case by the United States Department of Justice, 49 years after the fact. Stories surrounding Emmett Till's life and death remain in the ether as historians recount events leading to the birth of this modern civil rights movement in the United States.
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The author shares his heart and soul, and through his special encouragement makes Jackson, Mississippi a critical read for those who truly want to affect change. Just listen to his words: “An effective organizer seeks to get grassroots people together – and does; develops ongoing and democratic local leadership; deals effectively with grievances and individual and family concerns; works with the people to achieve basic organizational goals and develop new ones; and builds a sense of the New World To Come Over the Mountains Yonder” – and how all of that relates to the shorter-term steps. An effective organizer has to be a person of integrity, courage, commitment, and a person of solidarity and sacrifice. The satisfactions are enormous.”
~ ~ ~

Susan Klopfer’s newest book, Unbeknownst, “very loosely based” on the murder of a Mississippi Delta civil rights lawyer who participated in the modern civil rights movement, is set for publication in March of 2012.

Emmett Till Blog; Murder in the Mississippi Delta; Civil Rights Cold Cases: Emmett Till Links

2011-09-29T10:21:00.000-05:00

Th "N" word gets an entire academic course.

Emmett Till Blog; Murder in the Mississippi Delta; Civil Rights Cold Cases: Emmett Till Links

2011-09-29T10:11:00.000-05:00

The Lynching of Emmett Till

Emmett Till Links

2011-09-29T10:09:00.004-05:00

So much is now being written about the murder of young Emmett Till back in 1955 in the Mississippi Delta. Here are some interesting and popular links.

http://blogs.clarionledger.com/jmitchell/
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Who Killed Emmett Till? .99 cents eBook (U.S.#). All formats. CLICK HERE
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Emmett Till Memorial Commission of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi

“The Murder and the Movement,” 1985 video produced by Rich Samuels for WMAQ TV, Chicago

Simeon Booker, “A Negro Reporter at the Till Trial”

James L. Hicks Investigations, Sumner, 1955

PBS, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” on The American Experience

“The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till”
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Who Killed Emmett Till? .99 cents eBook (U.S.#). All formats. CLICK HERE
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"Why It's Unlikely the Emmett Till Murder Mystery Will Ever Be Solved" By David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito

Dwight D. Eisenhower Library--Emmett Till Files

Conversation with Keith Beauchamp and Simeon Wright

Who Killed Emmett Till? .99 cents eBook (U.S.#). All formats. CLICK HERE

From the Land of Emmett Till: Remembering Robert Keglar, Mississippi Civil Rights Activist

2011-09-14T10:51:00.011-05:00

At right, the late Robert Keglar, a true Mississippi civil rights hero. (Photo by Susan Klopfer)

Just last week, an older man who was part of the (real) modern civil rights movement died in Georgia. I saw his photograph online and posted a short story about him on this blog, because there was mention of Emmett Till.

Readers learned this man was a beloved civil rights activist nearly all of his life, someone simply trying to bring about change that mattered.

What caught my eye in his photograph was that he sported a colorfully striped African hat, and as I looked into this picture, his kind eyes transported me back to Mississippi eight years ago, to remember an old friend, Robert Keglar.

Robert died at this same time last year. He was a junior high and history teacher in Charleston, a small town nestled in the hills overlooking the expansive farming lands of the Delta, and home to the actor, Morgan Freeman.

Robert was also a retired Scout leader, and once shared with me a fascinating story about the murder of Emmett Till; Robert had chaperoned a group of boys on a scouting trip at a campground just outside of Charleston. A frightened man, who apparently knew something about Till’s torture and murder, taking place in the early hours of this summer day, found his way into the Scout camp, where he told a frightening story as the camping fire burned down – before disappearing into the early morning hours as the sun came up.

When the FBI opened the closed case of young Till, they interviewed Keglar, after reading this story from my book, Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited.
~ ~ ~

What truly defined Robert’s life from his mid-years on, was that his mother, Elizabeth, was killed in a suspicious car crash Jan. 12, 1966 in a small town outside of Greenwood with her friend, Adlena Hamlett, while returning home from a meeting in Jackson. The women had been honored for civil rights accomplishments.

One week before the trip, a figure representing Hamlett was hanged in effigy at the county courthouse. The timing of this "car accident" accompanied the opening of federal hearings in Washington, D.C. on Mississippi's Ku Klux Klan activities. As hearings opened around the country, the Klan initiated acts of violence in each state under question.

There was another Mississippi incident on that same day, a fire bombing and murder that received major attention by the press. The murder took place closer to the city of Jackson and outside of the Delta. Reporters rarely traveled into the Delta to investigate crimes; it simply was too dangerous to go there.

“Birdia” as she was called, was the first black person to vote in Tallahatchie County after Reconstruction ended, an action that deeply angered local and state officials. She was working diligently to start the county's first NAACP (with the organization’s ridiculous requirement of 50 members in a rural area) when she died.

Her son, James, came home from the military three months after his mother's death, and spent remaining months of his short life trying to get the FBI and Justice Department to investigate his suspicions.

Within three months, James died in a house fire; his death leaves many questions. There should be records of his meetings with the FBI, but where are they?

The FBI states there is not enough information to open a cold case file on Elizabeth Keglar's or Adlena Hamlett's deaths, never mentioning James’s death.

But I am not convinced.

Using a young snippy, white girl (with little or no interviewing experience and no knowledge of civil rights history) to interview key witnesses, in my perspective, is a stupid way to investigate possible murders. I have said this to the FBI, but no one listens. The "interviewer" once confided she was “doing this for practice, anyway."

I came to know Robert several months after moving to the Mississippi Delta in 2003, when a relative who worked with my husband learned I was interested in the region's history. The relative told Robert about this, and Robert said wanted to talk to me about the deaths of his mother and brother.

When we spoke, even though it was almost 40 years after the fact, Robert could remember a surprising amount of details surrounding the night of the crash, and was helpful in trying to recall any information that could have opened an investigation.

This brave survivor of the modern civil rights movement once handed me lists of African Americans who had “disappeared” under suspicious circumstances over the years – lists collected by himself and by a number of families, all hoping that new facts could somehow be gleaned, helping them learn what happened to their relatives and friends.

Robert remained active in the NAACP, and in county and state politics, always doing whatever he could to assist other African Americans running for office. He attended the dedication of part of a state highway in his mother's name, and was very proud of this event. I believe this helped bring some closure to his mother's death.

The Elizabeth Keglar memorial highway is unveiled Friday, June 1, 2007 during a state ceremony. Officially, the section is located on 35 North at the Panola/Tallahatchie County Line to junction of Highway 35 North and North Creek Road.(Photo by Susan Klopfer).

I have written extensively about Birdia Keglar in Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited. There were so many twists and turns surrounding her death, and I am sorry I could not help Robert in his quest to learn more.

Now looking back on my two years spent in the Mississippi Delta, I hold several particularly warm memories of Robert. One time with my son Barry, a new lawyer fresh out of law school, Robert and I traveled to Greenwood to speak with some tough old birds from the sheriff’s department (the same town where The Help was filmed).

The deputies literally surrounded us as Barry quietly asked for permission to look through boxes of records in the courthouse.He was holding a fresh Freedom of Information Act form, or FOIA, as he spoke to the officers, and even handed this to them when he could not get anywhere else.

We thought we might be able to put our hands on some reports from the state Highway Patrol who investigated Birdia's car accident. There were later reports showing that many of those patrolmen were also members of the Klan.

So here is Robert standing in the circle, wearing his African hat, and that had to be a great moment for him.

Greenwood was one of the single most vile small towns in the Mississippi Delta, most notably the hometown of Byron de la Beckwith, the assassin of Medgar Evers, a beloved civil rights leader.

Had Robert worn that hat, say 10 years earlier, he would have been beaten and probably killed. (It could still happen there, today, I believe.)

Another fine moment occurred when Robert and I lunched at a popular Greenwood restaurant, once known as the place where local Klansmen ate breakfast, and an official meeting place for the white Citizens Councils, a statewide organization (still in existence) responsible for keeping Mississippi segregated, at all costs, while trying to “show the world that our unique system works just fine,” its founder, Robert Patterson, earlier told me.

While waiting for our food to arrive, I purposely spoke above a normal conversational tone about the history of this restaurant. Robert just smiled at me – even when it became obvious I was offending the white couple sitting at the next table.

I was hoping in a strange way, I admit, to give Robert something, since there would probably never be resolution over his mother's death. (Even if it was only from a few minutes of insulting white people who probably didn’t know or even care to know this restaurant’s racist history.)

Robert developed diabetes in later years, and was on dialysis. I was first worried for him, but the treatment seemed to extend his life, making him more comfortable, and he died at home in Charleston, where his granddaughter and other relatives still live.

I shut my eyes and see this fine, gentleman who actually saw significant social change come during the last years of his life. Robert’s major questions were never answered, but I know he experienced some peace and dignity at the end of his life – a feat that many of Mississippi’s African Americans never achieved.

Don’t let Hollywood’s version of life in Greenwood, Miss. fool you. The Help is not what life was like. Life was too often mean, horrible, rotten and lethal throughout all of Mississippi for African Americans who lived in those time.

You were very lucky if you were black and survived.

You certainly would not have shown up anywhere sporting a color-banded African hat, if you wanted to live.

Robert was born on October 30, 1925 and passed away on Sunday, September 12, 2010.

I have to believe that Robert got some answers to his questions.

Life has to have some meaning, doesn't it?
~ ~ ~
Kindle Edition (print also available through Amazon)

"Emmett Till was my age, on vacation with relatives in a rural farming town just like Magnolia Springs." Ester King (1943-2011)

2011-09-06T11:36:00.001-05:00

Ester King (handout photo, Houston Chronicle)

Ester King, someone most of us have never heard of, but who spent more than four decades on the front lines of protests and progressive organizing in the modern civil rights movement, is dead.

As he grew older, found a career, married and had children, the movement of his youth became the calling of his life, writes Cindy George for the Houston Chronicle.

He founded the National Black United Front, he relentlessly organized and agitated until an episode of cardiac arrest in mid-August. King, 68, died Thursday, according to a story carried in the Houston Chronical.

I've put a link up to King's entire story, and it is worthy of reading if you are interested in true civil rights history, and not the whitewash put out by Hollywood in movies like The Help.

What particularly drew me to King's story was his explanation about his initial interest in social justice: "There was one incident that really caught my attention, the Emmett Till lynching in Money, Mississippi in 1955. He was my age, on vacation with relatives in a rural farming town just like Magnolia Springs. As I looked at that infamous picture of his coffin-enclosed corpse (almost recognizable as human) in Jet magazine, I learned to my utter horror that lynching was not reserved for adults."

Here's the link to the Houston post --

1997 Murder of Cleve McDowell, a lawyer who tried to solve the Emmett Till murder (and others), leaves Forensic Questions Unanswered

2011-08-23T22:29:00.027-05:00

Cleve McDowell, left, and his friend, Rev. Jesse Jackson, go out on the campaign trail in the Mississippi Delta -- as the cotton dust flies. Jackson, who knew McDowell through the SCLC, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s civil rights organization, was helping his friend seek state office.

By Susan Klopfer

As the 56th anniversary of Emmett Till's murder arrives, the question of Cleve McDowell's death has kept my own John Grisham writer's passion alive.

Maybe someday another curious person will discover what really happened to this noble attorney from the Mississippi Delta, a man who knew Mrs. Till and who tried so hard to help find her son, Emmett's killers.

Several times as I've sought answers, whispered messages from old friends, past Alabama courthouse workers, and even a stranger standing with me in line at the Chicago AMTRAK station, have kept me going.

But I need more than whispers to solve this untimely death. Until then, here is some of what I do know about this mystery, so far.

In the early hours of March 17, 1997 the lifeless body of a Drew, Miss. attorney was discovered by his younger sister and his long-time office manager. The news traveled fast, and the following day the Associated Press reported:

DREW, Miss. (AP) - A civil rights attorney who was the second black to attend the University of Mississippi was found shot to death at his home, and a judge immediately slapped a gag order on investigators.

Cleve McDowell,56, was found dead in an upstairs bathroom early Thursday after relatives called police to say the door to his apartment was open and his car missing. Police continued to look for McDowell's Cadillac on Friday.

McDowell had been a public defender in Sunflower County for three decades. He was part of a group of black leaders organizing to pressure district attorneys and revive interest in many never-prosecuted cases in which blacks were killed for doing civil rights work.

During the 1980s, McDowell was the executive field director of the Mississippi chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People or NAACP.

That McDowell was "part of a group of black leaders organizing to pressure district attorneys" in civil rights actions, would never make it to obituaries published in Mississippi, even though this was noted in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal, a newspaper where I was once a reporter.

Further, most friends and those reading his obituary (either version) would never be told that McDowell's best friend, an Alabma lawyer who had grown up with McDowell, "committed suicide" only a few years earlier. Strangely, when McDowell came home from his friend's funeral, he told a minister friend that he, McDowell, would be killed next.

Or that the next day, the Delta lawyer quit his law practice. For the next three years, he worked only in the small Drew, Miss. church just down the street where he had started, helping his flock to grow the church -- picking out china, furniture, painting and doing everything but going back to his real job.

(When I tried to learn more about McDowell's friend, the man's family refused to talk. But a friend at the Alabama courthouse, where the friend worked, whispered over the phone that "everyone knew" this was no suicide. McDowell had let a few selected friends know that he had seen his body, that there were signs of torture. "He told me he would be next," a minister friend said, and McDowell's secretary confirmed to me her boss's sense of both relief and dread."

McDowell was well known around Mississippi. He was appointed to the state's Penitentiary Board in 1971 and named as state Head Start director in 1972, the first Mississippi African American to receive a governor's appointments.

In later years, the Delta lawyer revived the state's NAACP, first opened in 1954 by McDowell’s early mentor Medgar Evers, Mississippi's first NAACP field secretary.

McDowell served as a Sunflower County judge from 1978 to 1982 and ran unsuccessfully for the state legislature twice, in 1978 and 1987.

For a short time, he was a legislative aide to conservative U.S. Senator Trent Lott, leading some friends and political observers to question his motives. But friends say McDowell was a thoughtful and somewhat conservative civil rights advocate who was simply trying to better understand the motives of politicians like Lott.

It seemed that only his office manager, Nettie Davis, and a few close friends knew of McDowell's longtime relationship with Mamie Till Mobley, who, at 75, was still alive when McDowell died.

For years, McDowell studied the Emmett Till lynching, Davis told me, most likely because Till was killed a few miles outside of Drew when both young men were 14, and the murder had been particularly traumatic for Drew children. The brutal murder back in 1955 helped direct McDowell into the study of law.

McDowell updated Emmett's mother with occasional telephone calls and visits to Chicago about his efforts, while filling law office corners with stacked cardboard boxes holding papers and records he'd collected on Till and other unsolved murder victims, Davis said.

Some of the records were kept locked in his office safe, along with a dozen or more guns that McDowell always kept on hand for self-protection.

Six months after he was murdered, all of McDowell's investigative papers disappeared when his unoccupied law office caught fire, according to Davis.

The fire occurred the same week the State of Mississippi finally opened half of its secret Sovereignty Commission investigation files, kept under lock since 1972 - a long 25 years after losing a court battle with the ACLU to make records public.

A share of Mississippi's thousands of missing and potentially embarrassing Sovereignty Commission records could have landed in McDowell's office for analysis and safe-keeping before disappearing again during the fire, it has been suggested.

A man by the name of Juarez Webb, one of McDowell's public defender clients, who initially hoped McDowell could make his recent burglary charges go away, was tracked down and arrested within three days of his lawyer's murder.

Jet magazine reported March 31, 1997, that the 19-year-old was caught in Indianola, seat of Sunflower County, charged with capital murder and held without bond.

Webb was seen with McDowell late in the day of the murder, District Attorney Frank Carlton told Jet. A police officer found McDowell's body early the next morning in an upstairs bedroom when responding to reports from the victim's family that the front door to his home was open and his car, a brown 1995 Cadillac, was missing, Police Capt. Albert Robinson said.

McDowell, who lived alone in Drew, in a house he built using sections from his family's sharecropper home, was shot twice, Robinson said. Authorities soon found his car in Indianola. Webb was not in the car, but faced grand larceny charges for its theft.

Carlton told the Journal Constitution that there were "indications that Webb had driven McDowell's car from Drew back to Indianola," about 40 minutes away.

Following McDowell's murder, Sunflower County law enforcement and court officers insisted on enforcing the initial gag order on all related police and court records for 12 consecutive years.

Davis questioned why such an order would remain - not an unfair query, considering a gag order's intention. The order to keep such papers out of the public reach was first placed on the investigation to halt a local police chief from further damaging the crime scene and spreading inflammatory rumors, she said. (When I tried to have this order removed, years later, I got the same response. No one wanted to go near the case, even seven years later, I realized.)
* * * * *

McDowell was known for his accomplishments; he had distinguished himself academically early on in life as an outstanding Drew High School speech and debate competitor going on to study at Jackson State University.

In the summer of 1963, as the second black student after James Meredith to be admitted to the University of Mississippi, McDowell followed suit, becoming the first African American ever to study law at what was then the James O. Eastland School of Law, named after Sunflower County's well-known U.S. Senator and avowed racist.

Shortly after the murder of his friend and mentor, NAACP Field Secretary Evers, McDowell learned that both he and James Meredith were next in line for assassination, a fact he told in a taped interview to oral historian Owens Brooks, which was confirmed years later by a retired Parchman Penitentiary guard who revealed to me he was once asked to kill McDowell by a Delta planter.

McDowell brought a gun to the University of Mississippi campus after being chased home several times and receiving other verbal and physical threats. "Most everybody else had one," McDowell told Brooks, "but when mine was discovered, I was expelled."

In fact, it was not unusual for students to carry guns. The campus had been the scene of a wild-west shoot-out when the first black student, James Meredith, was admitted. McDowell later used data to prove U of M students commonly carried guns, in an attempt to be reinstated, but to no avail.

But praised in a letter of support by Mississippi's law school dean, McDowell finished his education at the Thurgood Marshall School of Law, Texas Southern University, a "better and safer" place to be," he told Brooks.

The University of Mississippi law school dean refused in 2003 to acknowledge existence of the letter of support in McDowell's files, turning away a Freedom of Information request. A call made to his office in 2009 was referred to law school archives where an archivist said the letter was definitely not in the school's possession. Several weeks later, the head archivist provided me with a copy of the letter that praised McDowell while he was a student in Mississippi. It had been found in a department file on the University of Mississippi campus.

As it would turn out, Texas Southern proved a better place for McDowell to finish his law degree, because the Texas black law school was emphasizing civil rights law while the University of Mississippi was far behind, McDowell told Brooks. McDowell excelled in his new school as a leader, becoming president of the student body.

Juarez Webb

Over 30 years later, as McDowell was well into his profession as a Mississippi lawyer, on August 21, 1997, Juarez Webb was indicted by Sunflower County grand jurors on charges of capital murder and robbery of McDowell. And for several months, the charges stuck.

It would be hard to make a case against Webb because there was tampering at the crime scene and there were no witnesses to the shooting.

The city's police chief was called to McDowell's home once the body was discovered, Nettie Davis told me in an interview. "He told us all to leave the house, all of us including the police officer, and he stayed in the house for a long time, literally tearing up the floors and walls - like he was looking for something.

"He walked out with a small sack, but I don't know what he had. It was obvious that he messed up the crime scene before the state investigators could get there."

"About 20 minutes" after the police chief's departure, Sunflower County Circuit Judge Gray Evans filed orders to seal the premises and to make discussions of any findings or evidence from the crime scene illegal for any officers and personnel working the crime scene.

The gag order remains in effect as of 2009, even though the investigation was closed years ago, asserts the county's assistant district attorney who, in the fall of 2003, refused access to any of the police investigation or court records stored in the courthouse basement in Indianola, even though the gag order never covered court officers.

"The police chief was saying awful things about Cleve when he came out of the house that morning. I know that Judge Gray [Evans] was just trying to tone things down before the gossip got out of hand," Davis said. "But I wouldn't think he meant for the gag order to never be lifted."

McDowell's family would have to approve lifting the gag order, a county judge said in 2003 after receiving an Indianola attorney's informal request for McDowell's records.

But Webb's case files, kept in the Sunflower County courthouse basement, were accessible. They included a copy of McDowell's autopsy report - performed in Jackson the night of McDowell's murder - by Steven T. Hayne, M.D., the state's controversial deputy coroner. It was a good find, since the state of Mississippi claimed to no longer have the original autopsy report or a copy on file.

How did I discover a copy of McDowell's autopsy report when the state of Mississippi said it did not exist? When it became apparent that the county assistant prosecutor was not going to hand over any records on McDowell, I decided to take another approach. I would quietly go back to "the girls" who worked the desk in the judges' office of the courthouse and ask for Webb's case files.

One of the clerks made a second trip down to the basement and found a box of papers that included the McDowell autopsy report. She lugged it back up the steps to their office where I could make copies.

And I was in!

The Autopsy of Cleveland McDowell

Dr. Hayne's report states there were "negative" signs of any drug abuse. Cause of death was listed as a "gunshot wound of the left neck, distant and perforating." The death was listed as a homicide.

Three gunshot wounds fired in "close temporal proximity" but not at close range, perhaps up to a distance of 15 feet," were described by the coroner:

...a "nonlethal" wound consisting of a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left back;" a "nonlethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left shoulder with re-entry penetrating gunshot wound of the left temple;" and a "lethal distant and perforating gunshot wound of the left neck."

These descriptions could not be put into sequential order, the report stated. Perhaps what is not included in the autopsy report leaves more questions than what was stated.

This officially stamped copy of McDowell's autopsy report does not give information regarding the range from which the gun was fired. In 2004, I asked a physician practicing forensic medicine to read the report and give his opinion. He was not given McDowell's name or any further information about the crime. (The physician asked his name not be used, fearing Mississippi politics.)

It appeared the shots could have been fired from fifteen feet away, this physician told me. He also speculated there could have been more than one shooter, given the angles of the three shots. Further, it surprised him that usual and expected information about the condition of bullets causing these wounds was not included in the report.

The forensics physician, looking over McDowell's autopsy, would not be alone in stating his doubts about the work done by Mississippi's deputy coroner and medical examiner. Hayne has been formally accused on various occasions of "causing innocent people ['there may be some on death row'] doing time at Parchman Penitentiary due to his testimony," said J.D. Sanders, a former Columbus, Miss., police chief who now works as an assistant police chief in Franklin, Tenn.

Interviewed by Radley Balko of ReasonOnline, Sanders cited an instance in 2007 when the Mississippi Supreme Court, by an 8-to-1 vote, tossed out Hayne's expert testimony in a case of a 13-year-old boy accused of killing his sister's husband.

Leroy Riddick, a state medical examiner in Alabama who has testified in opposition to Hayne, told Balko, "All of the prosecutors in Mississippi know that if you want to be sure you get the autopsy results you want, you take the body to Dr. Hayne."

Sanders and Riddick state that according to standards set by the National Association of Medical Examiners (NAME), the field's pre-eminent professional organization, a single medical examiner should perform no more than 250 autopsies per year.

At 325 autopsies performed per year, the group considers a doctor to have a "Phase II deficiency." At that point, it will not accredit a practice, regardless of any other criteria.

"Hayne has repeatedly testified under oath that he performs more than 1,500 autopsies per year-a staggering number ... That's more than four per day, every day of the year, for the 20 years Hayne has been in Mississippi. In a 2002 deposition, Hayne put the estimate at 1,800," Balko wrote.

(Excerpted from Chapter 15 of Who Killed Emmett Till, 2010, by Susan Klopfer. Available in print through Amazon, Lulu, and as an eBook at Smashwords.)

Did you find this true story of Cleveland McDowell interesting? If your answer is yes, you may be headed for a career detective and mystery writing or in forensic science.

Meanwhile, here are several forensic links that I believe you will find helpful --

Forensic Science Resources on the Internet
Online Forensic Science Resources
Tru-TV Crime Laboratory - Forensics and Investigation

From the Land of Emmett Till: Watching History Float By On a Sunday Afternoon

2011-08-21T21:48:00.012-05:00

The Story of Henry Crosby, a black man lynched in 1913 in Mississippi

Interesting graph, placing increased lynching in the South into a time frame between founding of the Ku Klux Klan and Northern migration

Here is how a conversation on Facebook ended up today, I swear, with a fascinating discovery of a facebook friend’s family history.

It certainly gave meaning to my otherwise slow Sunday afternoon.

When reading the following posts, understand there was about 15-30 minutes between most of the conversation, so this conversation went on for at least several hours. Here is the first message I just happened to see while scrolling through my Profile page:

Joie Nelum Bonds: Have you read any of your FB messages Ms. Klopfer?

(I don’t typically check my facebook messages, except for occasionally. The message from Joie looked like it had come in about six hours earlier, so I wanted to make sure I quickly responded.)

Susan Klopfer: yes. Just took a look a moment ago. However, I don't rely on this aspect of facebook, as much as email. Did I miss something?

Joie Nelum Bonds: just wanted to exchange thoughts with you on "The Help". I did finally go and see it. The times mandated that black people use a certain tone when they challenged a white person (Jim Crow Laws) and to a certain extent I feel that the movie industry still has certain mandates --that in order to "sell your product" to a crossover audience, you have to say it in such a way that it will be accepted. If she had been to assertive and shoved the history down the throat of her viewers, it might have turned them off and the demand would not be as great as it is. So all things considered, I had to respect the film makers choice to do overwhelm the audience with the history. ..as important as it still is..they needed to get the message in perhaps a softer tone. And I think she succeeded at that.

Joie Nelum Bonds: not to overwhelm ..pardon the typo

(So I go off on a tirade – since I don’t have good feeling about Hollywood and its latest whitewashed movie about civil rights. You really don’t have to read it all, suffice to say I disagree with Joie.)

Susan Klopfer: I understand what you are saying, and as far as marketing that is certainly true. The problem is, we already have a host of people who are lying about what happened in these years, i.e. Michelle Bachman, Rand Paul, Sarah Palin, and so many others. When movies coming out like Mississippi Burning (a fabrication, trying to make the FBI look responsible) it harms the people who need to know this history. The citizens of the United States. The violence was horrid in Mississippi and in many other regions.

When I lived there and started learning about all of the murders, I was almost paralyzed -- before I went to work and started gathering real history. The pressure to whitewash this is still tremendous. There are white Mississippi journalists and historians who will not speak to me. We just cannot let Hollywood dictate the story of our country and democracy. Tough, if they want to make money and can't do this unless they lie.

People need to know the real stories of heroism and bravery. The civil rights movement was anything but peaceful and understated. Sorry, but I would rather see truth and more empty seats in the theatre, if this is what it takes.

Susan Klopfer: almost forgot. You had an[other] interesting post about facebook and the Egyptian revolution. A UK journalist, Denis Campbell, has written a fascinating account of this and you can read a sample chapter at http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/

Joie Nelum Bonds: I respect your passion. And I hope that film makers receive the encouragement that they need to MAKE MORE DOCUMENTARIES covering the true history. I would want the truth told about my life if I were the subject, so I am not going to argue that at all.

Susan Klopfer: Thanks, Joie. When I was working in Mississippi, I started meeting older people who as they began to trust me, started sharing lists of names. It turned out these were lists passed down by their parents and grandparents of people who died mysteriously, were killed or just disappeared.

They all had pledged to keep these lists and someday show them to other people who might be able to find the answers. I combined these names with all the others I could find relating to the slaughter of AFrican Americans, just in that state. Here is a link of over 1,000 names that I put together.

The typical historian states that approximately 500 people were murdered in this time period. I believe a more accurate number would be close to 1,000. Here is a link to my lists of lists ... Take a look, and you will see why I am passionate about truth in telling...

Susan Klopfer: Here is a link to my Mississippi's Lists of the Dead. http://themiddleoftheinternet.com/OnlineBooks/Rebels/ListofDead.pdf

Joie Nelum Bonds: checking it out now

[I leave my computer and the house to go help my son move some furniture. About 90 minutes later,upon return, our facebook conversation continues.]

Joie Nelum Bonds: have to share this with my family, I see a name that might be one of our family members.

Joie Nelum Bonds: I think I've found my Grandfather's brother Henry Crosby, killed 1913.

Susan Klopfer: how interesting. Please tell me what you know.

Joie Nelum Bonds: My Granddad Mack Crosby accidently shot his biological father, Henry Crosy Sr. when he walked in on him (a tall Irish man) having sex with his mother (a woman from Guyana S. America). He and my great grandmother had 9 boys together, the oldest was Henry Crosby listed on page 15 or so of your list. When my grandfather escaped the south he took his older brother's name who had been hung for a crime he did not commit. The woman wanted sex from him and he wouldn't do it, so she claimed that he had abused her and they hung him for it. So-- I am thinking that is my grand uncle Henry Crosby who was hung in 1913.. ... sure fits the time frame.

Susan Klopfer: What page is his name on? I will see if I can find out any more. Remember those "crimes" were typically made up by the white law enforcement. Touching a white woman's hand was considered to be rape.

Joie Nelum Bonds: page 15

Joie Nelum Bonds: Henry Crosby

Susan Klopfer: I found Louisville, Miss. using Mapquest. It is an area east of the Yazoo Mississippi Delta, (the Delta ends east of Greenwood) [some] 25 miles North of Philadelphia, where [Michael] Schwerner, [James] Chaney and [Andrew] Goodman were killed in the summer of '64. That's a very rural, frightening area.

When I was driving between Meridian and Philadelphia just several years ago, with a group of people in a motorcade, some men in a pickup tried to stop us with baseball bats. It is truly fascinating that you found his name and also that you know this story. Why not do some more research and write about it.

This is the kind of truth that people need to hear about and realize why this movement was so difficult in Mississippi and why there is continued violence. The period of time, around 1913 was horrible, moving into the second phase of the civil rights movement. It is a time when people were getting some help from organized labor and even the Communist party, at least in the region along the Mississippi River. It was a time of many, many lynchings and massacres.

I found Henry's name on another site you should look at -- http://www.autopsis.org/foot/lynchdates2.html (“Henry Crosby lynched Louisville Mississippi September 21 1913”). There is a book that you might want to read that does a good job of describing [a period close to] these times, called American Congo by a professor from the University of Alabama [Nan Woodruff]. You can probably get it used on Amazon. I also write about these times in my book, Where Rebels Roost. Let me know what you learn. What an opportunity to do some real research for an important reason. Take care. You have some work to do.
* * *
I do love it when a good story floats by and I have the opportunity to catch the drift. Meanwhile, here is a fascinating book to read by Dr. Woodruff - It's a bit price and perhaps you can get a used copy. And it is fascinating.

Product Description

This is the story of how rural black people struggled against the oppressive sharecropping system of the Arkansas and Mississippi Delta during the first half of the twentieth century. Here, white planters forged a world of terror and poverty for black workers, one that resembled the horrific deprivations of the African Congo under Belgium's King Leopold II.

Delta planters did not cut off the heads and hands of their African American workers but, aided by local law enforcement, they engaged in peonage, murder, theft, and disfranchisement. As individuals and through collective struggle, in conjunction with national organizations like the NAACP and local groups like the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union, black men and women fought back, demanding a just return for their crops and laying claim to a democratic vision of citizenship. Their efforts were amplified by the two world wars and the depression, which expanded the mobility and economic opportunities of black people and provoked federal involvement in the region.

Nan Woodruff shows how the freedom fighters of the 1960s would draw on this half-century tradition of protest, thus expanding our standard notions of the civil rights movement and illuminating a neglected but significant slice of the American black experience.

Eight reasons why the death of Emmett Till is still important today; future film?

2011-08-17T10:14:00.011-05:00

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.

* * *

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.

Hollywood can still redeem itself (from The Help), by teaching diversity and tolerance through true historical movies on the civil rights movement

2011-08-16T15:08:00.003-05:00

Oprah! And Steven Spielberg! If you are out there in social media land, please drop by and read this blog (and facebook) post.

So here is my question: How are children supposed to learn not to be racist when adults all around them – on television, radio and particularly in person are making bigoted remarks?

Doesn't it seem that racist talk is on the increase since the election of our first black President? You only have to listen to Talk Radio for 30 minutes if you are not sure. Dial in to Rushbo, if you can stand it.

One recent racist public remark by U.S. Congressman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) was that being associated with President Obama was like “touching a tar baby.”

The Congressman's hometown newspaper did a quick poll, finding that half of those readers responding thought the remark was actually okay, and not racist.

So much for that poll. It's doubtful it was even scientific, anyway.

Can you imagine making such a statement?

I can't, particularly knowing full and well the history behind that remark. If you don’t know where the tag came from, start with looking up the derogatory history of Uncle Remus.

But Lamborn is not alone.

If you follow twitter or facebook, there are frequent remarks that make your spine tingle. And often, they are ever so politely accompanied by the phrase, “I am not racist, but…”

I have a short video on Emmett Till posted on Youtube. Every once in a while I check on comments. Some of the nastiest begin with the "apology."

Very obviously, this election has brought out the worst some people – those who do not have the sophistication or education to overcome racism and discrimination in the first place.

While some of us were raised in families that taught us tolerance and even inclusion, many of us were not and have had to struggle to get there. But we watched and learned, and realized we wanted to be better people.

And that we were missing out in life by “sticking with our own kind” and and not enjoying the friendship of others.

Have you noticed that often,the most racist remarks do not come out of the South, that there is often more serious dialogue in Jackson, Mississippi than in Portland, Oregon over racism and discrimination?

After living in the Mississippi Delta, and returning “home,” I quickly noticed that Northerners are actually worse than Southerners, with their defacto or silent racism.

Rep. Lamborn certainly makes this case for Northern racial hostility, except he wasn’t even silent with his bigotry.

Lamborn did apologize after he was called upon by journalists and others. So what? One would hope that an adult leader would do far better than this, in the first place.

So, how do we help children grow into becoming compassionate and caring adults, free of racist bigotry, when supposed leaders behave in this manner?

Teaching Tolerance, a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is probably one of the best places to start if you are looking for helpful ideas and materials. You’ll find the SPLC’s project at http://www.tolerance.org/.

Here’s the first suggestion from the Tolerance Project:

Seize the Teachable Moment

Perhaps formal discussions of race are outside of a teacher’s curriculum area. But when the opportunity to open a conversation appears, seize it, says blogger Pamela Cytrynbaum.

"In many cases, for many reasons, we miss this teachable moment by ignoring it," Cytrynbaum writes. Talking about race may feel uncomfortable initially, she says, but it can get better. "For those of us who are comfortable tackling the topic, let's work harder to share strategies."

You don’t have to be a teacher to seize a Teachable Moment. Maybe you are engaged in a conversation when a racist remark or joke is made. This is a good time to share how this makes you feel and why.

Don’t just get angry and blow or walk off. Use the opportunity to try and engage in some real conversation. I’ve often shared with a person making such a remark that I grew up around relatives who sometimes use these words, too. And that it makes me sad, because I love them (and I am not always sure they mean what they say) but I don’t respect them, because of their racism. I just wish they would try some new experiences to get them to a higher level of ethnic or cultural understanding.

Next idea – Looking Forward to a Record-Breaking Mix It Up Day

Teaching Tolerance's National Mix It Up at Lunch Day is Oct. 18. Each year, my sister who is a librarian in a public school, tries her best to get the schools to adopt this special day – and fails. But one day she will win.

This will be the 10th year for Mix. As your children head back to school this fall, plan to join those who race sensitive by speaking with their principal and getting the date on the school calendar. This day was developed to break down social barriers among students and help K-12 teachers create an inclusive school environment.

It’s an easy project, since basically, it is all about getting kids to eat lunch with kids who are not in their usual social groups – to mix it up.

Here’s another idea: Remember that MLK National Memorial Dedication on Aug. 28

The Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial will be dedicated Sunday, Aug. 28 in Washington, D.C. A week of activities is planned around the dedication, including public viewings, concerts, a youth event, a musical tribute, interfaith prayers and a gala. The memorial, featuring a symbolic stone of hope and an inscription wall, was envisioned as a quiet—yet powerful and emotionally evocative—space on four acres.

This new memorial will become an important site for students learning about Dr. King's work on behalf of civil rights, state SPLC representatives.

August 28 is also the 56th anniversary of the brutal murder of Emmett Till.

I am still really surprised when people who teach at the University level do not know the story of Till. I’ve spoken to famous anthropologists, sociologists and even historians who do not or “barely recognize” this name.

For many long years, the Emmett Till story (true history) was used as a cautionary tale for black parents to warn their children how to behave around whites, for their safety.

Finally, a young documentarian, Keith Beauchamp, researched and filmed a documentary about this important piece of civil rights history, resulting in the recognition of Emmett Till's name by more and more people (especially in the South) who now understand why the story is so important.

If Steven Spielberg wanted to make a truly, historical film about the modern civil rights movement, retelling this story (using Keith Beauchamp and other black historians as his consultants) this would be Spielberg’s finest hour.

If you know Spielberg, please ask him to do us all this favor. Oprah? Friends of Oprah! Are you listening?

What's Ahead: New Teaching Tolerance Lessons

Here are some suggestions for Teaching Tolerance -- preparing for the next four weeks – that come from the SPLC.

Starting this week, Aug. 15: Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice: Advertisements Promoting Activism (11 of 12)

Aug. 22: Using Photographs to Teach Social Justice: Showcasing Your Understanding (12 of 12)

Aug. 29: Everyone's a Helper (Grades PreK-5)

Sept. 6: The Different Colors of Beauty (New series)

Now please tell Your Friends About the Southern Poverty Law Center and Teaching Tolerance. The organization has a free newsletter at their website.

Keith Beauchamp -- Murder He Wrote (Who Killed Emmett Till?)

2011-07-26T17:40:00.017-05:00

Keith Beauchamp, Emmett Till filmmaker.

Beauchamp's critical work prompted a new investigation into the Emmet Till murder; his film, "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till." (photo by Susan Klopfer)
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I am always surprised when a teacher, anthropologist, history professor, a John Grisham fan (this one always stops me) or some other person who SHOULD know the story of Emmett Till gives me a blank stare when I mention it.

Yes, this important history was not being taught in high school classes way back in 1966 when I was a student in Lakeview, Oregon. Most white people and white historians, especially in the North, had not heard about Till and certainly were not teaching it. No one in my college U.S. history class at the University of Nevada, Reno touched upon the Emmett Till story, either. We always got the typical information about Rosa Parks, that she was too tired from working all day and decided to sit down in the front of a Montgomery city bus for this reason, alone.

Just the other day, I spoke with a Canadian visitor, a high school teacher, who was in my gallery in Gallup, New Mexico. We were talking about my book on Till, and he, too, did not realize the reasons for Rosa Parks' civil rights actions -- that she had been profoundly affected by Till's murder and by the finding of innocent of the two men who later confessed to this murder.

Most tellings of this story were passed along orally among Black people as a cautionary tale. It really was not until the early 2000s that the story started getting more attention when young documentarian Keith Beauchamp's work prompted a new investigation into the Emmett Till murder through his film "The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till."

The truth about Emmett Till was believed to be buried with this young man, Beauchamp told Sara Faith Alterman, writing for the Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers back in 2005.

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"My parents wanted to keep me aware, to be careful, so they would often tell me, 'don't let what happened to Emmett Till happen to you'."
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But Beauchamp's eventual documentary film would unearth enough overwhelming evidence to prompt a new investigation into a murder case that was closed nearly 50 years earlier.

Keith tells this story:

In 1955, Mamie Till Bradley put her only son on a train bound from Chicago to Mississippi so he could visit relatives. Having instructed him to mind his manners and corral his quick tongue, Mrs. Bradley made sure the boy kissed her good-bye before watching him scramble to make his train.

He was a fearless boy, Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old inner city kid who sparkled with an impish sense of humor. Such boldness, his mother feared, could get a young black boy into trouble in the heart of the Deep South.

It ended up putting him into an early grave.

The story is told that while looking for something to do on a sticky Mississippi Delta day, Emmett and his cousins ambled into the tiny town of Money, Mississippi, which boasted little more than a general store run by Roy Bryant and his wife, Carolyn, a young white woman.

(Carolyn still lives today in Mississippi, and could shed more light on what really happened next, but she continues to refuse to talk. Even to the FBI.)

What exactly happened in the store is still unclear; there have been accounts that Emmett made a pass at Carolyn Bryant, whistling at her and calling her "baby" before his terrified companions pulled him out of the store and fled the inevitable consequences of disrespecting a white woman.

And there are still other stores that continue to float around the Delta. One story goes that Emmett was mentally challenged. Bryant tried to help him, and because he was African American, her racist husband heard about this and went ballistic.

Three days later, Emmett was dragged from his bed at his uncle's house by Roy Bryant and his half brother, J.W. Milam. His body was later found floating in the Tallahatchie River, tied to a seventy-five pound fan and brutalized beyond recognition.

Mississippi authorities wanted Mrs. Bradley to keep the world from seeing "images of the grotesque waxen features that dripped from her son's bones, to allow no sunlight to pass through the hole in his skull, or reveal the eyeball that lolled upon his cheek."

But Emmett Till's mother showed great courage, especially for those horribly racist times in this country. She pried the lid open from her son's coffin to show the world exactly what hatred looked like.

A photograph of that ghastly image first caught filmmaker Keith Beauchamp's attention when he was a ten-year-old boy being raised in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "It shocked me," Beauchamp told this interviewer.

Now 39, Beauchamp had found the image in an old copy of Jet Magazine, "I was looking on one side [of the magazine] and here was this angelic face of Emmett Till, and on the other side was this disfigured face of Emmett Till. I couldn't believe that someone that young could be killed for whistling at a white woman. But, I don't think I really understood at the time what this picture was really about. I didn't understand the depth of it."

As it would turn out, both Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were tried for the murder of Emmett Till, and of course were acquitted by an all white Mississippi jury. The case has been considered closed ever since. There was a short attempt several years ago whenthe FBI reopened the case as a cold case. But no help came from a local Black prosecutor, who was said to be tightly controlled by local, white planters.

Carolyn Bryant didn't have to testify in this new look at the Emmett Till case. And a lawyer who was the same age as Till, and who came from the small town of Drew, Miss. (where Till had been taken and beaten in a small shed, before his body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River), had already been murdered, himself.

Cleve McDowell, an accomplished African American lawyer, a protege of James Meredith and of Medgar Evers, had been drawn into the field of law due to the murder of Till. He was a young school boy in Drew when the murder took place -- only a few miles away from where he, too, would eventually be murdered.

Dark clouds filled with questions hang over both of these murders even today. Thanks to the early, diligent work of Keith Beauchamp many historians and others are still seeking truth.

Since the age of 10, Keith Beauchamp has dedicated himself to serving justice for Emmett Till, telling his interviewer the Emmett Till case was something deeply embedded in the African-American male psyche, something mentioned to him all the time he was growing up, to teach him about racism that still existed in America.

Growing up in the Deep South, Beauchamp said he was "blessed" to have parents who instilled in me the education that they felt was needed for me to understand society."

Beauchamp's parents "wanted to keep me aware, to be careful, so they would often tell me, 'don't let what happened to Emmett Till happen to you'."

Beauchamp came close to meeting a similar fate when in 1989 he attended a nightclub with some friends. A bouncer dragged him outside "by an unknown man who began throwing punches." Beauchamp recounts that he fought back, "though the situation proved even uglier when the stranger revealed himself to be an undercover police officer."

Beauchamp was quickly arrested for the crime of dancing with a white girl.

"After being dragged to the station, handcuffed to a chair, and kicked to the floor to endure more beatings, Beauchamp was finally asked for identification. He was released only when the detective on duty realized that Beauchamp was close friends with the son of a Major with the Sheriff's Department," Alterman wrote.

"Living in the Deep South, where real racism exists, you feel like you're invincible, and that's how I felt. I was a kid, I was just having fun. Even though I was dating, and things of that nature, there was nothing serious for me. It was just having relationships and having a good time. A lot of things kept bringing Emmett Till up in my head, because I was so close to being Emmett Till himself," Beauchamp told her.

Beauchamp studied Criminal Justice at Southern University, but left school before graduation to pursue a career in entertainment in New York. He first wrote music videos with a production company owned by some friends. But soon began to develop a feature film "about the boy whose face had haunted him since his youth." And then he launched into production of a documentary, meant to serve as a tool for garnering supplemental information.

Beauchamp would spend nine years of his life researching, producing, and screening The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till, a tragic documentary which recounts the life and death of a 14- year-old Chicago kid who left home on a vacation trip to be with his cousins and returned in a pine box, a martyr.

Over in Montgomery, Ala., young Rosa Parks would hear of the tragic death and then white-wash of a trial, that set Till's killers free. It is now said by historians that Till's murder was the spark that set off the modern civil rights movement -- Parks had planned to take her stand, by not riding home from work in the back of the Montgomery city bus. When she heard the Mississippi story, she knew she would finally have to follow her plan.

(Remember how we were taught in history that Rosa Parks was tired that day, and decided she deserved to sit in the front of the bus. It has taken years for history teachers to adopt the true reason for Parks's decision, that she was already a civil rights advocate and that Till's murder caused her great concern.)

This would be Keith Beauchamp's first film, initiated through research in a library, scanning microfilm to try and accumulate information about the case.

"What he discovered ended up launching his project in an entirely different direction. Archival articles revealed names of witnesses who had never been questioned by the authorities, and alluded to additional participants who helped beat Emmett to death," Alterman wrote.

Beauchamp told her that all evidence came via the microfilm...names in the articles of the people that were involved with the murder that weren't ever brought to court.

The young researcher found it strange to find overwhelming evidence "that was just there, and nobody ever took the time to go back and research all of that stuff."

So Beauchamp headed for the Mississippi Delta in hopes of uncovering the truth, tracking down the people he had read about who allegedly witnessed the crime, but found they were reluctant to speak out.

"Many were African-Americans from the Delta who had kept silent for decades, afraid of meeting a similar persecution if they revealed what they knew about the people who brutally murdered a 14-year-old boy."

But from those people who ultimated trusted this New York City documentarian, he would learn of more people with information, taking him to various parts of country to track them down and hear their story.

From their stories, Beauchamp discovered ten people who he believes had been directly involved with the murder, some who are still alive. And he confirmed what he already suspected; that the truth about Emmett Till had yet to be uncovered.

Through his determination, Beauchamp persuaded the Department of Justice to reopen the murder case and launch a new investigation. He made it his mission to produce a documentary that gives viewers new evidence and astounding testimonials.

Inspired by black filmmakers such as Spike Lee, and also Stephen Spielberg, Beauchamp kep at these officials until the case was opened and the investigation that never was -- finally took place.

Fortunately, Emmett Till's mother was stil alive when Beauchamp began this venture, and he became very close to Mamie Till Mobley [formerly Bradley].

Till's mother had pledge to honor her son's memory, "doing everything in her power to educate the country about the repercussions of hatred. She had always hoped to persuade state authorities to reopen her son's case, but could never provide concrete evidence that would compel such an investigation."

This new relationship with Beauchamp would prove to be powerful.

Before he was murdered in 1997, Cleve McDowell had been looking into the Till murder, his secretary told me. "They would talk on the telephone at least once a month and he would tell her what he knew."

Now years later, Beauchamp seemed to be picking up where McDowell left off. Had Beauchamp ever heard of McDowell? I once asked him this question, and he said "no."

For nearly eight years, Beauchamp told Alterman, he and Till's mother made join dicisions about the film and even developed a strategy to obtaining the interest of government officials.

But Mamie Till Mobley died in 2003, adding a difficult hurdle for Beauchamp to get over. "I told her I would find the truth and I meant it," Beauchamp once told me.

On May 10, 2004, Beauchamp's documentary forced social justice upon the government, when the Department of Justice announced that a new investigation into the murder.

Beauchamp wants his film to reach out to an international audience, helping those around the world who seek social justice.

He told Alterman that in 1955 "a lot of the social and political issues were the same as they are today," and that it is not unusual to see history repeating itself in these times. The Till case should help with reparations, he believed. It should help with the openbing of other civil rights cases."

Beauchamp, only a few days ago, expressed disappointment over the decision by the Department of Justice to not reopen the Malcolm X murder case.

But knowing this young man's sense of social justice, he will only keep pushing and pursing truth -- and taking the rest of us on this amazing journey.

I've had the privilege of and visiting with Keith several times in person and he always amazes me. What a wonderful advocate for social justice and change.

Thank you so much, Keith Beauchamp, for giving us back this important history lesson.

From the Land of Emmett Till: My High School Reunion an Opportunity to be Among True Heroes of the Vietnam War

2011-07-13T21:09:00.002-05:00

Soldiers still remembered for their courage in Vietnam (Photo may be subject to copyright)

Most history lovers, who know the story of Emmett Till, also recognize that this 14-year-old was not a true hero. I have written much about this young school boy from Chicago who on a hot summer night was kidnapped from his uncle’s home in Money, Mississippi and brutally murdered in the Delta, back in August of 1955. Till’s story, thanks to his mother’s quick decision that his body be shown publicly to the world when it was returned home, remains elemental in modern civil rights movement history and is considered the impetus that moved Rosa Parks to take her stand in Montgomery, Alabama.

Parks was horrified that the two men who killed Till were found innocent just months later. They eventually confessed to killing this African American child and throwing his body into the Tallahatchie River, all because he whistled at a white woman, the wife of one of the two murderers.

However, in the process of learning as much as I can about this crime and of those times, I have also discovered truly heroic accounts of vibrant men and women, black and white civil rights heroes, whose stories of bravery and determination have sometimes brought me to tears.

Aaron Henry of Clarksdale, Mississippi, was the first of these heroes I read about, an intelligent and sensitive black man who began advocating for human civility years before going into WWII. When he came home from the war, Henry became known locally and even nationally for his devotion to the cause and for his effective remarks. He was a vigorous leader who spent time in jail, was beaten with clubs and bitten by dogs because took great risks by speaking out against powerful people. A beautiful book about his life was written by Constance Curry, a brave white woman who went into the Mississippi Delta during some of the most violent years following Reconstruction to aid Henry and others in their quests.

This past week, I met up with some heroes, and it was in a very different setting, certainly not confined to history books. After 45 years, I reunited with old classmates from the school I attended in Eastern Oregon during my eighth through sophomore years. As I earlier stated, I often write about the lives of heroes, people like Medgar Evers and James Meredith – Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman, or Fannie Lou Hamer. Most are people who I have never met. Most are deceased. However, their heroic stories must keep being told, particularly as new details are discovered.

As it turned out, several of my old high school classmates quietly and bravely served in Vietnam. We listened to their stories, sometimes through tears, realizing how deeply we cared about these old friends and, for me, recognizing how in some ways they reminded me of some of the heroes I have been writing about.

After our three-day camping reunion ended, I was walking through the Portland International airport to catch my flight home. While waiting to grab a quick lunch in a restaurant line, an angry young business-type started throwing a fit about a food server. “He should be fired on the spot!” this man told the manager. I decided to share my reaction (to the delight of others standing in line, waiting to pay their bills). “Cool it, man. You are going to have a coronary. These are just regular people and as far as the rest of us are concerned, they are doing a fine job. They are quick, knowledgeable and nice,” I told him, thinking at the same time that a coronary might bring him some needed humility.

The notion of a quick coronary came up because the night before, one classmate told us around the campfire, he’d had a coronary just last year, and we were all worried for him. His doctor, he said, advised him that taking a daily aspirin would have kept him from having the attack. Well, I think this friend, a pilot in Vietnam, should not have been sprayed with Agent Orange! I also think our country should have welcomed him and all of his brothers and sisters home in a civil and loving manner, not with protest signs and spewing of hate. A better welcome home would have helped, he confided to me. “No one ever truly welcomed us back.”

I watched my old classmate as the fire burned down, and my heart went out to this true hero. His job had been to fly in close enough to pick up wounded soldiers, taking great personal risk. Of course, I did not get to know Aaron Henry or any of the others I have been discovering while writing about Mississippi, but I cherish the most knowing these classmates, now in their early 60s. Some who went to war did not survive, but I can still see their faces, even if so many years have gone by.

I am sure that you know some heroes, too. Why not give them a hug and tell them how great they are. If they went to war, let them know how happy you are that they made it home alive. It is never too late to welcome home a war hero, even if 45 years have passed since the last time you spent time together.

As my friends and I shared farewell hugs, I was thinking we might never see each other again. At least for now, I could say…

Welcome home, my friends.

Welcome home.

+ + +

Until the end of July, my eBook, Who Killed Emmett Till? can be downloaded for free. You will find it HERE in multiple formats.

WKET is also available in print.

I almost got to be friends with Tom Hayden

2011-06-30T10:56:00.015-05:00

1960s civil rights and anti-war activist, Tom Hayden (photo may be subject to copyright)

Without heroes, we are all just plain people who don't know how far we could go. Bernard Malamud

I almost got to be friends with Tom Hayden.

Someone recommended us as facebook friends but when I clicked to accept, I learned he is already "full" -- Tom can't take on any new friends; he most likely hit his 5,000 friend limit years ago.

Well, darn it.

As a civil rights book and ebook author, I would have been proud to be friends with this civil rights giant.

American writer and political activist Thomas Emmet Hayden (born 1939) was one of the few radical leaders of the 1960s to outlast the movement, and is admired for remaining alive politically without sacrifice of his principles.

In 1961, Progressive magazine sent him to McComb, a small town in southern Mississippi (home of Medgar Evers) where he was tasked to cover the student walkout at all-black Burglund High School.

During to the walkout, he was pulled from an automobile, and beaten badly. He was warned to get out of town so that he would not be killed.

I am pretty sure he made it to the Mississippi Delta, too, the once-dangerous region north of McComb where Emmett Till was killed in 1955.

The year 1961 was early for someone like Hayden to come into Mississippi -- he was terribly brave just to make the trip.

Hayden's friend, Joan Baez, traveled to the Delta and tried to tie herself to a swingset at an elementary school, protesting because black children were being beaten in the school yard. Locals feared for her life.

Nearly anyone with a political name made it into Mississippi during those years of the modern civil rights movement. Mario Savio, later to be the 21-year-old leader of the Berkeley Free Speech movement, a student uprising at the University of California, Berkely, also was in McComb where he worked during freedom summer.

Marion Barry went to Mississippi, Harry Belafonte, and so many other famous people who cared.

A friend of mine, civil rights activist Margaret Block (she and her brother, Sam Block, were early SNCC members) tells me how she loved watching Bob Dylan accompanied children singing in the small town of Ruleville, home of activist Fannie Lou Hamer, during the magical freedom summer.

Hamer was a home grown activist who later stood up to Hubert Humphrey and Lyndon B. Johnson at the National Democratic Convention when she told Democrats in a famous speech how she was raped and beaten for using a white restroom at a bus stop in a small Mississippi cotton town. Hamer would later die from the injuries she received back then, and from her poor health, owing to many years of being ill and malnourished.

Well, it would have been nice to be Tom Hayden's friend.

To me, he is an American icon to be admired and we need more leadership like his in today's world, especially when it comes to civil liberties and rights issues.

I would have loved to ask Tom Hayden questions about his time in Mississippi and share the answers with my friends. I want to know more about Vietnam (and Jane Fonda).

I want to try and get Hayden to produce a movie on Emmett Till -- a movie that is totally unlike The Help -- a movie that actually tells the truth about the modern civil rights movement and isn't just a feel-good movie that puts white people on pedestals or whitewashes real history.

So come on -- if someone out there in facebook land is Hayden's friend, someone who has lots of other friends besides Hayden and is willing to lose him at least for a while, please let me know.

Or let Tom know.

Either way is okay.

(Note: Very soon after I wrote this blog post -- Tom Hayden emailed me and made it possible to be his friend. He actually dumped somebody for me!! What a treat. Thank You, Mr. Hayden. You continue to be a hero to me. sk)

Michele Bachmann, Emmett Till, Fuzzy History; What do they have in common?

2011-06-28T22:58:00.006-05:00

A car is nearly devoured by Kudzu vines. (Image may be subject to copyright.)

If there is something I really can't stomach, it is fuzzy history. Reading the other day about John Adams' new facelift, thanks to Michele Bachmann's friend's rewording of the Adams Wikipedia entry, I was most disturbed. And then I came upon a diversity and civil rights news release issued by a major organization (that should know better) that begin..."The civil rights movement started in the 1960s..."

Unfortunately, that writer doesn't know her history very well. Unlike Bachmann's pal, at least this writer was not trying to change history to her benefit, she just didn't know any better.

The modern civil rights movement began even earlier than the 1960s, and in fact there has always been a civil rights movement of some kind going on in this country, as soon as people were enslaved. Some U.S. historians see the period before and after the Civil War as representative of the first movement, while the years around WWI as another important period of time, and the modern civil rights movement beginning around the period of WWII.

As August approaches, bringing with it the 56th anniversary of the death of Emmett Till, it is important to remember his death, and it is equally important to recognize the incredible violence accorded to black people in this country for so many years. Otherwise, we live in a world of history according to Bachmann, where Adams was a Founding Father those who were enslaved were treated "pretty well."

One unforgettable story that I learned about while researching Who Killed Emmett Till? took place in the years following the overthrow of Reconstruction, when some resistant blacks who did not leave the South tried to organize.

The story begins in Minter City, a small town hidden away in the cotton fields of Mississippi, not too far from Glendora where young Till would later be kidnapped from his uncle's home.

A Mississippi black Populist leader, probably from Leflore County, (described in the local press as "the notoriously bad negro") and named after the famous English zealot Oliver Cromwell, organized the Colored Farmers Alliance (CFA) in Leflore County in 1889, at a time when the population was 14,276 black and 2,597 white residents.

Meetings grew from small groups to large rallies, and Cromwell encouraged African
American farmers to buy their supplies at Southern Farmers Alliance cooperative stores, posing a threat to the food/debt dependency created by the planter/merchant monopolies.

Planters threatened Cromwell with death and demanded that he leave Mississippi.
Seventy CFA members marched through the tiny village of Shell Mound, not far from the Tallahatchie River where Emmett Till’s body was tossed years later, protesting
intimidation and announcing their resolve.

Some Delta planters feared a race war and, in September of 1889, the Governor sent three regiments to Minter City to ensure that the CFA members were unarmed. Completing their assignment, the state regiments withdrew and allowed a massacre of CFA members and families to proceed. There were no reports of blacks being armed or of whites being shot; estimates of African Americans murdered reached as high as one hundred.

From his research on the massacre, historian William F. Holmes discovered several firsthand accounts recorded by travelers who happened to be in the region, including the observations of J.C. Engle, an agent for a New York textile company, who was in and about Greenwood during the trouble.

When he arrived at New Orleans several days later, Engle described in chilling words how Negroes “were shot down like dogs.” Members of the posse not only killed people in the swamps, he wrote, but they even invaded homes and murdered men, women and children. Engle told how a sixteen-year-old white boy “beat out the brains of a little colored girl while a bigger brother, with a gun, kept the little one’s parents off.”

Several sources reported that the posse singled out four well-known leaders of the Colored Farmers Alliance whom they shot to death: Adolph Horton, Scot Morris, Jack Dial and J.M. Dial. “A black undercover reporter sent to the region stated that the truth may never be known because terrified blacks dare not speak of the matter, even to each other.”

The lack of coverage of this massacre by the Mississippi press, and the failure of state and federal officials to lead investigations, left researcher Holmes asking how many other instances of violence of a “greater and lesser magnitude” happened in Mississippi during this era.

One informant, who grew up in Minter City long after this incident took place, told Holmes that he had never heard of the massacre but did report of folk lore from his youth about dead bodies in the “Singing River,” who could sometimes be heard at night.
* * * * *

QUITE CONVENIENTLY throughout the Delta, a green vine called kudzu creeps along the ground silently and slowly strangles the life out of a tree or bush. While it looks so innocent and its purple flowers smell so good, be reminded it is the plant that eats Mississippi, digesting much of the state’s historical reminders as it roams.

Traveling into Minter City, the quiet, nearly vacant town centers on a small brick church that is carefully maintained. But kudzu vines have started to overtake an enormous cotton-ginning operation nearby that no longer functions. No singing came from the river on this day I traveled to Minter City, not to my ears, at least.

How did this vine get into Mississippi and thrive? As the kudzu story goes, during the 1930's when the economy was so poor, the federal government encouraged Southern farmers to plant kudzu, claiming it to be the savior of Southern soil that was worn out through poor management and too much planting of cotton. The government provided the kudzu seedlings free of charge and paid farmers to plant it.

Kudzu is not native to this country and with no natural enemies and a warm, humid climate, kudzu quickly took root in Mississippi and in the rest of the South. The Asian plant is almost impossible to get rid of once it has taken root; kudzu roots may go more than twelve feet deep and its vines can grow a foot in length a day and more than sixty feet over the course of the summer. Kudzu is said to cover over 250,000 acres in Mississippi, alone.

(Kudzu actually has some benefits. Vines are good for basket making and there is something in the kudzu root that reduces the craving for alcohol as much as 90 percent, current researchers find.)

As kudzu snakes across fields, creeping over abandoned roads and worn down buildings, this plant is by far the best for aiding and abetting Mississippi’s cover up of its history, perhaps even better than some of its native historians.

Emmett Till eBook Price Now 99 Cents

2011-06-23T13:06:00.008-05:00

News Release
For information, contact
Susan Klopfer
susan@emmett-till-ebook.com
http://emmett-till-ebook.com

AUDIO BOOK TRAILER -- Click to Listen

Publisher Lowers Emmett Till eBook Price to 99 cents; 'It's Time For More People To Know This Story,' Author Says

"After you read [Who Killed Emmett Till?], the events will live in your heart and mind too, because [Klopfer] makes it come alive. This is highly recommended." Max G. Bernard, author of Another Place, Another Time

A new price of 99 cents(USD) for the eBook version of Who Killed Emmett Till? has been announced by author Susan Klopfer.

The 14-year-old Chicago school boy's August 1955 murder became a rallying point for the modern civil rights movement in the United States and was a factor in moving Rosa Parks to take her stand to sit at the front of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama later in December.

The 56th anniversary of young Till's death who was born July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Ill. and murdered on Aug. 28, 1955 in Money, Miss. is the reason behind the decision, Klopfer said.

"Too many people still do not know this story. Now they can easily download it on their computers, iPhones, digital book readers and learn what happened, why and how this relates to the modern civil rights movement."

The eBook is available for 99 cents on the Smashwords.com website specifically at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/8175.

Who Killed Emmett Till? is also available in print format and is available on Amazon and most other major online bookstores.

Till was born to working-class parents on the South Side of Chicago. "When he was only 14 years old, he went by train into rural Mississippi to visit with relatives. His mother knew he didn't always mind and liked to play tricks, so she warned him not to do so in Mississippi, that white people were less acustomed to black people speaking out.

"Emmett's mother told him that he would need to keep his mouth closed and not speak to white people first. She had not been into the South for some time; she was actually born there and had some clashes herself with Jim Crow, state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965 that mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities.

"Further, some of Emmett's friends had been back to the region to visit their relatives and had not had problems."

But the South was in an uproar over the U.S. Supreme Court's 1954 decision (in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka), which overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine established in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) that allowed racial segregation in public facilities.

Klopfer tells the story that Till was accompanied to Mississippi on the train with his great-uncle, Moses Wright. His grandfather was a sharecropper, and Till spent his first days helping with the cotton harvest and household chores.

"He wasn't used to hard labor, so after the first day in the cotton fields, he was sent back to the Wright home to help his aunt tend the family garden and do household chores."

On August 24, Till and a group of other teens went to a local grocery store after a day of working in the fields, some witnesses stated that one of the other boys dared Till to talk to the store's cashier, Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Reportedly, Till then whistled at, touched the hand or waist of, or flirted with the woman as he was leaving the store.

Klopfer said that when researching the Till story she met one of Till's cousins who confirmed that Till really whistled at Carolyn Bryant. Yet, other relatives have disagreed.

"Whatever the truth, no one told his great-uncle about the incident, and in the early morning hours of August 28, Roy Bryant, the cashier's husband, and J.W. Milam, Bryant's half brother, forced their way into Wright's home and kidnapped Till at gunpoint."

Emmett Till was severely beaten and taken to the banks of the Tallahatchie River, near Glendora, upriver from Money, where he was killed with a single gunshot to the head, according to official accounts. The two men tied the teen's body to a large metal fan with a length of barbed wire before dumping the corpse into the river.

"When his body arrived back home in Chicago, there were photographs in the pages of Jet magazine and the Chicago Defender, and his murder became a rallying point for the civil rights movement," Klopfer said.

The trial of Till's killers began on Sept. 19, 1955, and from the witness stand Wright identified the men who had kidnapped Till. After four days of testimony and a little more than an hour of deliberation, an all-white, all-male jury (at the time, blacks and women were not allowed to serve as jurors in Mississippi) acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges.

Protected from further prosecution by double jeopardy statutes, the pair was paid for the story and interviewed by their lawyer and a journalist in a 1956 article for Look magazine in which they admitted to Till's kidnapping and murder.

Klopfer said her eBook, Who Killed Emmett Till, brings a fresh look. "I lived in the Mississippi Delta where this event took place and had the opportunity to visit important sites and speak to people who were living there at the time.

"I was able to track down the funeral home employee who cared for Till's body before it was sent home, for instance, and his story was riveting."

Klopfer said she remains amazed at how many people simply have never learned about this story, despite its significance in the civil rights movement.

"The story of Emmett Till is still not being taught in many schools, and this is a shame. It is so important to know about this child, since the story truly represents the violence of what went on in this country before and during the great changes that have come.

"Too many people died as we went through this period. It is history that must not be forgotten or hidden."
* * * * *

Klopfer's eBook was recently reviewed by author Max G. Bernard who gave it high marks: "Klopfer explains the history, demands justice, talks with some of those still alive who, as she says, 'still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds.' After you read this book, the events will live in your heart and mind too, because she makes it come alive. This is highly recommended."
* * * * *
Who Killed Emmett Till? is also available in print form at Amazon.

99 cent eBook version available at Smashwords. Click Here.

From the Land of Emmett Till: "Emmett and Me"

2011-06-22T09:44:00.009-05:00

Who Killed Emmett Till? It is a fair question to ask, as the 56th anniversary of this murder arrives.
* * * * *

Recent flooding in the Mississippi Delta* * * * *

In 2003, my husband was hired by a private medical group to be the mental health director for inmates in Mississippi’s state-run prisons. And so, our lives took on a new dimension as we made a small, red brick house on the grounds of the once notorious Parchman Penitentiary our new Sunflower County home, in the heart of the Delta.

Eventually, I would enjoying smelling the rich alluvial soil and appreciate where we had been dropped, and I use this word with sincerity, because I really did feel as if I had crash-landed in a foreign country, but an interesting one at least.

But not the afternoon of my arrival. The air conditioning was broken and the house had not been cleaned by maintenance crews, as promised. There were cobwebs in every corner, dirt on the floor and it was at least 100 degrees plus beastly humid in the shade.

Honestly, I was madder than hell when I finally got to Parchman because the car had broken down in Oklahoma, putting our three cats and myself into a dilemma. Fred had been living in Jackson, the state capitol, for a month and could only help problem solve by telephone as we drove in from Nevada. Plus, we were REALLY broke.

Something I would learn following my self-serving fit of anger was that prisoners don’t ever have air conditioning in this old prison that was built at the turn of the 19th century, except in the hospital unit. All of the historic brick and turn of the century buildings were replaced years ago by metal construction and the prisoners were living in what amounted to bake ovens. They were living in hell.

Mississippi State Penitentiary, earlier known as Parchman Farm, is the oldest prison and the only maximum security facility for men in Mississippi. It was built in 1901, houses almost 5,000 inmates, and has its roots deeply seated in the blues. The most notable recording was by Bukka White, with “Parchman Farm.”

However, many famous people have come to stay at the farm, including Elvis’s father and the first known photo of Elvis is of him inside the facility. A dozen or so years later, Freedom Riders were imprisoned at Parchman while the state’s governor and President Kennedy talked about their civil disobedience. They were eventually released and only last month, a number of those brave souls returned to the old prison to celebrate their victory when they were greeted into Mississippi by state officials. Time really does march on, especially in Mississippi, or Miss-sippi, as the locals say.

Summer left and on cooler fall mornings, I watched out the front window of our new home through the leaves of the ancient pecan trees as several prisoners at a time trotted rescue and misfit horses into the ripe cotton fields. They earned this privilege, working with a unique horse-care program, and I wondered how much it would hurt to enjoy and then relinquish such freedom when evening came.

Eventually I would learn that one year before we arrived, Mississippi’s Department of Archives and History, upon court order, made its second release of an online full-text version of the state’s secret Sovereignty Commission records. The commission operated as a private spy agency from 1956 to 1972 within the state government, with a mission to investigate and halt all integration attempts.

The commission’s second goal was to make Mississippi look good to the world, despite the rich history of frequent beatings and murders of its black citizens and outsiders who came into the state, trying to end racial violence and discrimination, and reinstate voting rights.

But even more fascinating to me, was that in the same year we moved to Mississippi, the FBI began re-examining the murder of Emmett Till and would exhume his body the following summer as one of more than 100 unsolved civil rights cold cases that occurred prior to 1969.

Fred came from a liberal, big-city family and could recall hearing his parents talk about 14-year-old Till's murder when he was a child growing up in Oregon. Raised in a small eastern Oregon town,in a more conservative family, I had never heard this important story. Yet Fred had not realized until the news came out that we were living in the epicenter of the Land of Emmett Till.

The story of this young man from Chicago who was murdered in a small, nearby cotton hamlet began to resurface in the national news when his body was exhumed and examined in June of 2005 by the Cook County medical examiner’s office. While eating catfish and greens in Drew’s Main Street restaurant, we listened in as some Delta people, black and white, talked quietly about what was happening.

Who would not be interested in this story?

Soon, I was spending more and more hours in Walter Scurlock’s cozy restaurant listening and then driving around the Delta, trying to piece together the stories I was gathering from all of the whispers. A few of the older black people warmed to my questions and started sharing their secrets of relatives and others who were brutalized and sometimes killed, over the years.

And as they told their stories, it was as if these horrific crimes had just occured. Most white people eating dinner at Walter’s, on the other hand, didn’t seem to want to share what they knew unless they had been actively involved in the movement. Or they simply didn’t know the history.

Or they or their relatives had been part of the brutality.

Mississippi’s William Faulkner once wrote “The past is never dead, in fact, it’s not even past.” And in true Faulknerian spirit, the people who wanted to talk to me were soon sharing their stories. Some had kept lists of up to thirty names, passed through their families, of people who had “disappeared.”

Others told stories of their own involvement in trying to bring change in a confederate state where so many soldiers had been terribly wounded in the Civil War, and where the white relatives of those Rebels who lost arms and legs, their land and often their lives, could still recite the history of those atrocious times of well over 100 years ago. Mississippi had taken the worst beating of all the Southern states and the wounds have never gone away.

I started looking through yellowed files in small-town libraries, museums and newspaper offices seeking records of any kind to expand my knowledge; some records were so delicate and uncared for, they crumbled in my hands and I had to quickly put them down so they would not be ruined.

Still, the best history came directly from the people who talked to me — men and women wanting to tell me what they experienced or had heard during some of the worst years of Mississippi’s civil rights … and civil wrongs.

Who Killed Emmett Till? -- with their loving help -- would eventually fill my computer screen, and so many of my thoughts as well, since we left the Mississippi Delta.

Susan* * * * *

Free Book Trailer, Audio Samples -- Who Killed Emmett Till

2011-06-21T01:09:00.009-05:00

Newspapers tell the story of Emmett Till. (This image may be subject to copyright).

Very soon, we will once again be reliving the story of Emmett Till when the 56th anniversary of his murder takes place in late August.

I will be blogging excerpts from various articles I have written over the years about this murder of this young Chicago school boy in the Mississippi Delta.

Meanwhile, here is a trailer from my book, Who Killed Emmett Till? that I would like to share with my blog followers. I have also posted four audio samples from the book, as well.

Please feel free to share this book trailer and related audio samples. I am constantly amazed at how many people DO NOT KNOW this important piece of history, let along its significance to the entire modern civil rights movement. And I am sure that you are, too. So please share. Let's all get this story out during the coming months.

Here are four audio samples from Who Killed Emmett Till? -- please enjoy and pass these on...

Audio Sample #1
Audio Sample #2
Audio Sample #3
Audio Sample #4

Thanks,
Susan Klopfer

Song: My Name is Emmett Till; Emmy Lou Harris Sings

2011-06-18T14:34:00.000-05:00

Emmy Lou Harris singing, My Name Is Emmett Till

Click HERE

From the Land of Emmett Till ..."About things that should never be forgotten"

2011-06-17T11:46:00.010-05:00

From a good friend of mine* -- some things we must remember...

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR

- June 15 2011

This is about things that should never be forgotten and, indeed, must be remembered forever.

This is the time of the year which, almost half a century ago in 1963, saw the climax of our Jackson Movement. That massive and, from us, non-violent struggle was brutally and often bloodily attacked by hordes of Mississippi "lawmen", thugs, vigilantes. The Jackson Movement's examples of martyrdom are many. On the peak of that great mountain of courage and sacrifice is the death of Medgar W. Evers, field secretary of the Mississippi NAACP. [His killer, white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith, was eventually convicted in 1994, after two hung white juries in 1964, and died several years ago in the Mississippi State Penitentiary.] I knew Medgar as a close friend and co-worker in struggle from almost the moment of our arrival in Mississippi in the late summer of 1961 right through to his murder on the night of June 11, 1963 [he died shortly after midnight on June 12.] These paragraphs here are excerpts from our very full web page in appreciation of Medgar and the Jackson Movement. The link to that full page and an interesting related link on our violently attacked Jackson Woolworth Sit In are given at the conclusion of this introductory material.
-----
Editor's note: Nov. 2011 is the official release date of Salter's new book, Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronice of Struggle and Schism. Click here to pre-order through Amazon.
-----

From our full web page:

I knew Martin King -- not deeply and well -- but consistently. I called him
on the night of June 13 1963 from Jackson -- two days after Medgar Evers was shot and killed. Our rapidly growing protest demonstrations were being bloodily suppressed. I asked Dr King to come to Jackson for Medgar's funeral on June 15. He readily agreed to do so. We picked him up and several key staff of his -- Ralph Abernathy, Wyatt Walker and others -- at the police-drenched Jackson airport. It was already very hot and the temperature was to go, that day, to 102 super-humid degrees. Martin King and Dr Abernathy rode in my car -- along with Bill Kunstler -- and the others were brought by Ed King. We had a very grudging police escort from the city's all-White police department. The Jackson setting could not have been more lethally dangerous for all of us -- but Dr King visited easily and casually with me, and I with him, as we traveled the very dangerous several miles to the Negro Masonic Temple on Lynch Street. The funeral was huge -- several thousand people, inside and out -- and, following the funeral, six thousand of us marched the two miles or so from the Temple to the Collins Funeral Home on Farish Street. [It was the first "legal" civil rights demonstration in Mississippi's hate-filled, sanguinary history.] Then, there was a second massive demonstration -- which is discussed in my following post on Medgar Evers.

I knew Medgar Wiley Evers deeply and well.

This extensive document focuses heavily and in considerable detail on my personal and direct recollections of Medgar W. Evers. It also deals with the epochal Jackson Movement of 1961- 1963.

Written by me [Hunter Gray] on September 27 1966 -- little more than three years after Medgar's death in 1963 -- to Ms. Polly Greenberg, a writer from New York City -- my recollections were fresh, sharp and vivid. [And they certainly still are -- etched forever in my psyche.]

Copies of this letter are held in my collected papers at State Historical Society of Wisconsin and Mississippi Department of Archives and History. A copy is also held by a very good and faithful colleague, Mrs. Doris Allison of Jackson, then President of the Jackson Branch of NAACP, and, with Medgar and myself, a signer of our famous letter of May 12, 1963 -- which threw down the gauntlet to the power structure of Jackson and Mississippi. [Mrs. Allison and I talk several times each month.]

Very curiously -- surprisingly -- this extensive personal reflection/appreciation with respect to Medgar W. Evers, a major civil rights figure in Mississippi and national martyr, has been ignored by most writers who have had access to it. One of those who did use it -- and quite effectively -- was the New York Times reporter, Adam Nossiter, in his good Of Long Memory: Mississippi and the Murder of Medgar Evers, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1994.

I now make it quite public.
For our full page, my letter to Ms. Greenberg and more, on Medgar W. Evers: http://hunterbear.org/medgar_w.htm

And, among our many other pages on the Jackson Civil Rights Movement, see our two consecutive pages on The Woolworth Sit In -- the most violently attacked sit-in of the 1960s: http://hunterbear.org/Woolworth%20Sitin%20Jackson.htm

*HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

I have always lived and worked in the Borderlands.
Our Hunterbear website is now eleven years old..
Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm

See - Personal and Detailed Background Narrative:
http://hunterbear.org/narrative.htm

See this on the new, expanded edition of my book,
Jackson Mississippi -- the classic
account of the historic and bloody Jackson Movement of almost
50 years ago: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm

And see Shooting Lupus (my killing a deadly disease that
did its best to kill me:http://hunterbear.org/shooting_lupus.htm
-----
*Reprinted with permission from HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR.
----------------

Editor's note: Nov. 2011 is the official release date of Salter's new book, Jackson, Mississippi: An American Chronice of Struggle and Schism. Click here to pre-order through Amazon.

---------------
From Amazon's site --

Review
“A meticulously crafted, almost hour-by-hour account of the rise and fall of one of the region’s more remarkable grass-roots protest movements.”—Journal of Mississippi History
(Journal of Mississippi History 20110311)

“Essential reading. . . . A valuable account of events and insight into the internal dynamics of the [civil rights] movement.”—Journal of Southern History

(Journal of Southern History 20110311)

“As history, Salter’s book is personal and on a human scale; tell (Social Development Issues 20110311)

“John Salter provides a sympathetic, carefully reasoned, and highly readable first-person sociological account of the events surrounding Evers’ murder and its actual and symbolic connections with this transition in the civil rights movement.”—Social Forces: International Journal of Social Research

(Jay Weinstein Social Forces 20110311)

“[Salter] is able to produce an excellent case study in social change by focusing not on personalities but on the collective will and actions of people involved in a mass movement.”—Wisconsin Magazine of History

(Wisconsin Magazine of History 20110311)

“Jackson, Mississippi is a gold mine of raw data.”—J. S. Himes, UMOJA: A Scholarly Journal of Black Studies

(UMOJA )
Product Description
This is the gripping story of the civil rights movement in Jackson, Mississippi, told by one of its foremost activists, John R. Salter Jr. In 1961 Salter, then a teacher at Tougaloo Southern Christian College, the private and almost entirely African American school just north of the state capital, became the adult advisor of the North Jackson NAACP Youth Council, a post that for lifelong activist Salter blossomed into impassioned involvement in the Jackson movement.

The struggle for civil rights featured some of the bloodiest resistance by a panoply of repressive resources—“lawmen,” hoodlums, politicians, and vigilantes—but also introduced Salter to the movement’s most compelling and important figures, including NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers. Jackson, Mississippi tells the riveting story of their campaigns to abolish Jim Crow, including a committed and courageous economic boycott of Jackson that was instrumental in the desegregation of the capital’s business district. A fierce and passionate retelling of frontline stories from a cultural revolution, Jackson, Mississippi is a vivid snapshot of the Deep South in the 1960s and a testament to the brilliant, dangerous, and historic actions of the civil rights activists there.

From the Land of Emmett Till; Juneteenth Delta Tour and Blog StartsThursday, June 16

2011-06-15T16:04:00.009-05:00

Juneteenth Tour of the Mississippi Delta; From the Land of Emmett Till

Tomorrow morning, June 16th, Friends of Justice will head east to Mississippi for a nine-day civil rights tour. After picking up civil rights legend Margaret Block in the Delta, the group will head east for a two-day memorial of slain civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman.

On Sunday afternoon Dr. Alan Bean, author (Taking Out the Trash in Tulia, Texas), historian and civil rights advocate, will be talking about the contemporary Curtis Flowers case as it relates to the troubled history of the Magnolia State. Dr. Bean covered the recent Flowers trial.

Then the group heads to the Delta where Dr Bean will visit with Curtis in Parchman prison and we will conduct civil rights tours with school children from Cleveland MS.

You can show your support for this life-changing adventure by donating to Friends of Justice now.

You can follow this blogging journey HERE.

----

What a tremendous way to learn some contemporary civil rights history. Dr. Bean, founder and director of Friends of Justice, is a well-regarded historian and author. Margaret Block was part of the modern civil rights movement, as well as her late brother, Sam Block.

It certainly is quite a kick-off for Juneteenth!

Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization that works to uphold due process for all Americans. Our goal is to build a public consensus for ending mass incarceration and respecting human dignity in our criminal justice system.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent. Friends of Justice emerged as a coalition of defendant’s families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony.

Learning from our experience in Tulia, Friends of Justice started organizing across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi. We launch narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice.
-----

More about Alan Bean: Alan Bean: Executive Director, Board President, and Founding member. Since the spring of 2000 Alan Bean has been the Executive Director of Friends of Justice, a criminal justice reform organization that specializes in narrative intervention.

Dr. Bean was serving a Methodist church as an interim pastor when 46 people were arrested in Tulia, Texas on the uncorroborated word of a corrupt undercover officer. Dr. Bean’s articulate public protest transformed him into an advocate for criminal justice reform. In 2006, Dr. Bean’s work led to the exoneration of a Louisiana family convicted of running a crack cocaine ring on the perjured testimony of convicted drug dealers.

Dr. Bean researched the story of six juvenile defendants in Jena LA, bringing public scrutiny to Jena and creating the biggest civil rights protest since the March on Washington. He is now working on a murder case in Mississippi that has gone to trial six times. In the fall of 2008, Alan’s unique brand of advocacy was featured in Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era, a book by Markos Zuniga of the Daily Kos.

Alan’s book Taking out the Trash in Tulia, Texas, an insider’s account of the role Friends of Justice played in reversing one of the most egregious injustices in recent American history, is now available in paperback.

Susan

Discount on Diversity eBook for Emmett Till Blog Readers

2011-06-10T14:57:00.000-05:00

As a special bonus to readers of this blog, I am offering a special discount on my new eBook, Cashing In On Diversity when they purchase it through Smashwords --

Promotional price: $2.99
Coupon Code: HC29F
Expires: July 10, 2011

To purchase your copy now, go to http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/63393 and use the Coupon Code, above, for your special discount.

Susan

Trail Marker Dedicated to Emmett Till at Bryant Grocery in Money

2011-06-07T16:10:00.003-05:00

Leslie Burl McLemore (second from left), director of the Fannie Lou Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy, stands in front of a marker commemorating Emmett Till after its unveiling Wednesday in Money. / AP Photo

It was an astounding Mississippi event that almost slipped by ...

The first marker on the Mississippi Freedom Trail was unveiled just three weeks in the small village of Money. This was the site of the grocery store where young Emmett Till was said to have whistled at the store-owner's wife.

From there, we all know the story, by now --

Some 150 people attended the ceremony at the site of Bryant Grocery and Meat Market.

In 1955, Till, a black teenager visiting from Chicago, whistled at the store's proprietor, Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped and murdered Till. The two men were acquitted by an all-white jury in Tallahatchie County. They later confessed to the murder in an interview with the magazine "Look".

Till's death is credited by many as being the catalyst of the U.S. civil rights movement. Certainly, the trial of the two men who murdered Till (and the verdict of not guilty) helped Rosa Parks make her decision to sit at the front of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Yes, there had been others. But Parks was a visionary and she was the right person at the right time to make this act count.

Mississippi's tourism officials describe the trail as "a cultural initiative to educate a new generation about the violent civil rights struggle, and Mississippi's role in it."

Republican Gov. Haley Barbour said in a statement the trail "will be an outstanding educational attraction that will honor those from around the country who contributed to the civil rights movement here."

That's a positive statement from Barbour, who last year said he didn't "remember much" about the civil rights years as a youngster living in nearby Yazoo City.

Peace,
Susan

New Diversity e-Book 'Penned' By Emmett Till Book Author

2011-06-04T18:33:00.001-05:00

News Release
Contact Susan Klopfer
505-728-7924
sklopfer@gmail.com
http://susanklopfer.com

Emmett Till Book Author Writes New eBook On Diversity; ‘It has been a natural progression to delve into this topic’

(Gallup, New Mexico) –The author of a newly published eBook with a quirky title – Cash In On Diversity – asserts the more variations of people involved in an organization or business, the more financial success.

“It’s just this simple. Getting along with all kinds of people – working in a highly diversified environment and being aware of diversity management techniques, actually results in better sales revenue, customer numbers and profitability,” Susan Klopfer said, citing academic research and her own informal information gathering experiences as her sources.

Klopfer’s newest interest, the topic of diversity, “comes about quite naturally,” she says.

“After living in the Mississippi Delta and gathering civil rights history stories, I knew that someday I wanted to go a step further and write about the positive aspects of just getting along.”

The author of “Who Killed Emmett Till” said she will continue her interest in civil rights, but that “expansion into diversity was an important step.”

Sociologist Cedric Herring recently found that a workforce made up of employees of both genders and varying racial backgrounds resulted in dramatically positive business outcomes, according to Klopfer.

“Herring’s study makes the case for diversity in clear financial terms. She found that companies reporting the highest levels of racial diversity brought in nearly 15 times more sales revenue on average than those with the lowest levels of racial diversity.”

The Illinois sociologist’s study, reported in the April 2009 American Sociological Review (ASR), “actually found racial diversity to be a better determinant of sales revenue and customer numbers than company size, the company's age and the number of employees at any given work location.

“So, getting along with all kinds of people really pays off for business – and it certainly affects the bottom line,” Klopfer said.

Cash In On Diversity, published by Smashwords (distributor of eBooks to the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony Reader Store, Kobo and the Diesel eBook Store) blends practical experience with academic findings and provides do-able solutions. The 12 chapter eBook features a diversity and psychology FAQ contributed by a social and clinical psychologist, a discussion of five common diversity mistakes companies make, specific tips for communicating with non-native speakers, an 11-point organizational diversity analysis, the script from Klopfer’s popular diversity webinar, followed by a complete glossary of critical diversity terms (“from Abrahamic religions to xenophobia”).

Klopfer’s interest in diversity comes through her business and civil rights background. She holds a master’s degree in business from Indiana Wesleyan University and an undergraduate degree in communication from Hanover College. The former Missouri journalist and Prentice Hall editor wrote three civil rights books on the Mississippi Delta – Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited, The Emmett Till Book, and Who Killed Emmett Till?” She also wrote a Book of-the-Month alternate selection on personal computing, published by Prentice Hall.

Klopfer resides in Gallup, New Mexico where she recently opened a vintage and southwestern gallery – “a quiet, little shop in a multicultural community where I can write, enjoy art and meet interesting people.”
--END--

Hamza al-Khateeb might be Syria’s Emmett Till

2011-06-02T17:41:00.002-05:00

From The New Yorker --

Hamza al-Khateeb

June 1, 2011
Emmett Till in Syria
Posted by Amy Davidson

President Obama, in his speech about the Arab Spring, compared Mohammed Bouazizi to Rosa Parks and, though their particular stories are different, there is something to that. Both refused to go along, in a way that made others realize that that their own lives had to change. If so, then Hamza al-Khateeb might be Syria’s Emmett Till—a murdered child whose battered face makes it hard for others to look themselves in the mirror, and remain complicit or even just quiet.

Who Killed Emmett Till? Free download

2011-03-18T18:09:00.000-05:00

I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2003 as the Emmett Till cold case was opened. Living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary, a notorious compound with a fascinating history, gave me a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at this civil rights ground-breaking event and to meet some of the people who still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds.

My book, Who Killed Emmett Till, was recently moved into an ebook format and you are invited to download a substantial section for your reading. Go to Smashwords to get your copy where multiple formats are available -- https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/8175

Susan

From the Land of Emmett Till...

2011-03-04T10:09:00.003-06:00

I just received this important message from Keith Beauchamp, the Emmett Till documentary producer. Keith, who was nominated for an Emmy, has been working on a fascinating new civil rights history project that focuses on cold cases:

Dear Friends,

PLEASE TUNE IN THIS FRIDAY (MARCH 4, 2011) FOR "THE INJUSTICE FILES" EPISODE 3: HE WALKS ALONE ~

ON THE INVESTIGATION DISCOVERY CHANNEL AT 9PM EST /8PM CST!!!!!!

EPISODE 3: 'HE WALKS ALONE ' PROFILES THE MURDER OF WILLIAM LEWIS MOORE WHO WAS THE FIRST KNOWN WHITE MARTYR OF THE AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT! PLEASE SPREAD THE WORD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THANKS IN ADVANCE FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!

SINCERELY,

KEITH A. BEAUCHAMP
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER/HOST
"THE INJUSTICE FILES"

P. S. VIEW A SNEAK PEEK OF EPISODE 3 HERE: http://investigation.discovery.com/videos/the-injustice-files-the-dangers-of-southern-activism.html#icpgn=idhpdrl4

From the land of Emmett Till: Fannie Lou Hamer

2011-02-25T03:54:00.004-06:00

For Black History Month, Remembering the Bravery of Fannie Lou Hamer

There are some essential stories one must know to understand or at least have a feel for the modern civil rights movement in the US. Besides knowing the story of Emmett Till, it is critical to know of Fannie Lou Hamer. Writes civil rights historian and advocate, Dr. Alan Bean:

Fannie Lou Hamer never recovered from the beating she suffered in the county jail in Winona, Mississippi. A blood clot eliminated vision in one eye. Severe damage to her kidneys shaved decades off her life.

http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/2009/12/10/songs-got-us-through-fannie-lou-hamer-in-winona/

Who was this brave woman, described here?

Dr. Bean recently, and bravely, covered the story of Curtis Flowers, who was finally convicted (after five trials) of a crime he clearly did not commit. In the process, Dr. Bean gives us a wonderful glimpse of this civil rights hero, Mrs. Hamer...

Black History Month: Emmett Till documentarian, Keith Beauchamp, has more surprises in store

2011-02-17T09:29:00.003-06:00

Keith Beauchamp, left, interviewing Johnny Holcomb, a retired state police investigator in Louisiana, in "The Ghosts of Bogalusa" episode of "The Injustice Files." (Photo, Investigation Discovery)

From The New York Times:

Better known for crime fare like “I (Almost) Got Away With It” and “Deadly Women,” Investigation Discovery is using Black History Month to turn the spotlight on three unsolved, racially motivated killings of the 1960s. For Keith Beauchamp, the 39-year-old documentary filmmaker who is an executive producer of the series and its host, it is familiar terrain. He’s been involved with these cases for years, since starting the 2005 documentary “The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till,” about a 14-year-old who was tortured and murdered in Mississippi in 1955 for supposedly whistling at a white woman.

Information uncovered by Mr. Beauchamp, as well as by the filmmaker Stanley Nelson (working on his own 2003 film, “The Murder of Emmett Till”) led to the reopening of that case.

***Honestly, if it were not for the dedicated work of young, aggressive Keith Beauchamp, we would know very little of the critical story of young Emmett Till who was killed in the Mississippi Delta, back in the summer of 1955. Keith has spent his professional life tracking down this story as well as what happened to so many others who were killed in those horrid times.

Mississippi's Gov. Haley Barbour, the man who wants to be President, may not have been "paying much attention" to what what going on back then (as he has since stated) but he could make up for much of his ignorance by following Beauchamp's work.

Yes, others have been researching and writing about these events, but most have been led by Keith's early and critical work on the subject. Information uncovered by Mr. Beauchamp led to the FBI's reopening of that case. From my own experience working with Keith, he always answers questions and attempts to help in any way. He is a true historian of critical U.S. civil rights history and I am proud to know him.

Please pass on this link to others TODAY! And if you get the opportunity, thank Keith Beauchamp for his dedicated work. He is shaping history.

Link to full story on Kevin Beauchamp, Emmett Till and civil rights cold cases documentarian.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/arts/television/16civilrights.html?_r=1&src=twrhp

Susan --

Atlanta King Center announces screening of Emmett Till documentary

2011-02-17T09:08:00.006-06:00

The King Center in downtown Atlanta, Ga. announces screening a of CNN documentary, Pictures Don’t Lie, which explores the career of famed photographer Ernest Withers, who is known for his striking images of the Civil Rights movement and Emmett Till, and who has recently been found to be an informant for the FBI. The program will premiere later this month on CNN, Center officials state.

Story of Emmett Till Brought To Life During MLK Week of Peace Convocation

2011-01-28T04:53:00.004-06:00

The Xavier Herald reports:

The audience of primarily young African American women and men sat on the edge of their seats, fully enveloped in Giovanni's re-creation of Emmett Till's ...

Silence filled Loyola University's packed Roussel Hall as poet Nikki Giovanni transformed herself from a petite, 62-year old woman into a black teenager hanging out with his cousin, Emmett Till, 15, who was visiting from Chicago. The audience listened to the story of this smart-dressing, stocky young man known for being a prankster and braggart, despite his speech stutter.

Story Continued-- http://www.xavierherald.com/news/mlk-week-of-peace-convocation-1.1921565

Civil Rights & Social Justice News: Civil Rights Author Speaks Out on FBI Investigation of Civil Rights Martyrs Murders; Medgar Evers Murder Investigation Reopens?

2011-01-25T04:41:00.000-06:00

Civil Rights & Social Justice News: Civil Rights Author Speaks Out on FBI Investigation of Civil Rights Martyrs Murders; Medgar Evers Murder Investigation Reopens?

From the Land of Emmett Till: Life Magazine's Photographs Collection

2011-01-25T03:32:00.000-06:00

Life Magazines photos relating to Emmett Till, his family, the trial and more --

http://www.life.com/image/52757602/in-gallery/23001#index/0

From the Land of Emmett Till, and Beyond: Violence Has No Place in Our Society

2011-01-10T09:03:00.000-06:00

Subject: Tell Sarah Palin: Violent threats have consequences

Dear Friend,

Violence had no place in Mississippi when young Emmett Till was murdered and it has no role in our society today.

Our hearts are heavy for the victims of the tragedy in Arizona. We must put a stop to the escalating hate rhetoric of the right and its very specific calls to armed violent action. Lines of decency have been crossed.

Sarah Palin has a special responsibility and opportunity in the wake of the attempted assassination of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. For it was Sarah Palin and Sarah Palin alone who earlier put the crosshairs of a gun on Rep. Giffords. And so far, Palin's response has been Facebook prayers for the victims and an official denial that her widely distributed map involved gun sights at all. This is obscene duplicity at best.

I'm joining CREDO Action in calling on Sarah Palin to renounce the use of shooting images in political rhetoric immediately, and stop using her platform to promote and validate violent calls to action on the right.

Click on the link below for more information and to find out how you can take action, too.

http://www.blogger.com/goog_2130267172

Tweet this petitionTell @SarahPalinUSA Threats of violence have no place in our democracy

http://www.blogger.com/goog_2130267177

Tweet this

Who was Emmett Till? Author Devery Anderson provides a case study

2011-01-06T22:15:00.000-06:00

Stories From Mississippi - Emmett Till's background detailed in book by Devery Anderson.

Along the Mississippi River

"When eighteen year-old Mamie Carthan met Louis Till, a young man three months her junior, and nine inches taller, she was impressed by his sophistication and confidence. Born in Missouri and orphaned, Louis had just recently moved to Argo, Illinois, to work for the Corn Products Refining Company. He was also a part-time boxer and a skilled gambler." Devery Anderson

Click HERE to read a small excerpt from the first chapter of Anderson's newest book on the Emmett Till case --

FBI Report on Emmett Till Investigation

2010-12-29T08:38:00.005-06:00

In March, 2007, the FBI released a summary of its 8000 page report of its investigation of the murder of Emmett Till. This report also includes the 354 page transcript of the 1955 murder trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant. The transcript had been lost for decades, but in the course of their investigation, the FBI located a faded copy and re-transcribed it.

One interesting point from this report shows how the Citizens Councils attempted to interfere with the trial. Every juror was visited by a member ("counselor") and told to vote the "right way." Haley Barbour must have "forgotten" this little piece of history.

Click on the link below to read the pdf of both.

Link to FBI Report - Emmett Till

Emmett Till Timeline - Winter Months, 1955 - 1957

2010-12-26T01:30:00.003-06:00

During December through January, several significant events surrounding the murder of young Emmett Till took place between 1966 through 1957.

1955
December 5: One hundred days after Emmett Till's murder, Rosa Parks hears of Till's lynching and lack of conviction of his killers. She soon refuses to give up her seat on a city bus, launching the Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott and the modern civil rights movement. The boycott lasts 381 days.

1956
January 24: Look magazine publishes an article written by Alabama journalist William Bradford Huie, entitled The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi. Huie has offered Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam $4,000 to tell how they killed Emmett Till. Milam speaks for the record. The story published will later be questioned for its truthfulness.

1957
January 22: William Bradford Huie writes another article for Look magazine, "What's Happened to the Emmett Till Killers?" Huie writes that "Milam does not regret the killing, though it has brought him nothing but trouble." Blacks in Drew and Ruleville have stopped frequenting stores owned by the Milam and Bryant families and put them out of business. Bryant takes up welding for income, and both men are ostracized by many members of the white community. Both men will have trouble for the rest of their lives in trying to produce income.

From the Land of Emmett Till: Citizens Councils Played Critical Role in Mississippi's Racist Culture

2010-12-22T02:48:00.002-06:00

Part II: Mississippi’s Citizens Councils Pick up Warp Speed

By Susan Klopfer

Excerpted from Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited (Klopfer, 2005)

After Brown v. Board of Education, Mississippi picked up a new holiday – “Black Monday.” Judge Thomas Pickens Brady (pronounced Braddie, as it used to be spelled) fanned segregation flames by substituting this name for the day of the U.S. Supreme Court’s initial school desegregation decision. His suggestion was a quick hit with the Leflore County town of Greenwood’s Sons of the Revolution audience (where he first tried it out) and then with others around the State.

The former Dixiecrat asserted the Court’s ruling was Communistic and soon expanded his speech into a 90-page document, “Black Monday,” full of typos and promoting organized resistance to integration. Brady’s pamphlet was an encyclopedia of racist ideas that proposed the creation of a 49th state solely for blacks, and contained such observations as, "Whenever and wherever the white man has drunk the cup of black hemlock, whenever and wherever his blood has been infused with the blood of the Negro, the white man, his intellect and his culture have died."

Brady’s document became a source of inspiration for Robert “Tut” Patterson and the Citizens Councils movement, and was widely distributed. Funds donated by racist financier Wickliffe Draper of New York were quite possibly used for printing and distributing the Brady document. With the goals of the Civil Rights Movement perceived by Draper as posing a great threat, Draper had already “opened wide his purse strings between the late 1950s until his death in 1972, pouring huge amounts of money into various anti-integration projects conducted by some of the most ardent racists.”

One of those “most ardent racists,” W. J. Simmons, was once referred to as “Dixieland apartheid’s number one organization man” by a political journalist and then tagged “extremist … even by Mississippi standards” by the New York Times. Simmons, considered the “shadow ruler behind Governor Ross Barnett,” had quickly usurped Patterson’s power and prestige, becoming the chief organizer and administrator of the Citizens Councils of America.

Simmons later inherited control of a large portion of Draper’s resources, likely making his first contact with Draper via Sen. James O. Eastland. Not much is really known about Simmons’ background. During World War II, he served as a civilian with the Royal Engineers of the British Army and later briefly in the U.S. Navy. Simmons told others that his views on race hardened while he was in Jamaica, claiming that “a caste system had sprung up there among Negroes of various shades creating, endless problems,” wrote researcher George Thayer.

It was easy to see why national publications tagged Simmons as an extremist: As editor of The Citizen, the Citizens Council’s official publication, Simmons – “perhaps the Councils’ most indefatigable speaker… reflecting much of the members’ attitudes” – editorially asserted that a “three-pronged attack” was being mounted against constitutional freedoms, “beginning with an attempt to reach an agreement with Soviet Russia, and including recognition of that country and the Test Ban Treaty.”

Simmons once advised readers that “an attack was under way on the white race, that all races were to be submerged in a sea of egalitarianism through integration … to be ruled by a liberal elite in a planned society.” His articles typically ranged from school segregation to “the lower intelligence” of black children. One entire issue of the newsletter was devoted to “How to Start a Private School,” reflecting a major objective of Simmons and the Citizens Councils. The editor also wrote such pamphlets as “Why Segregation Is Right” that could be purchased by Councilors.

Perhaps coincidentally, Simmons shared the same name as the Methodist preacher from Alabama who in 1915 reorganized the Ku Klux Klan in the South after it had nearly collapsed. When one researcher asked Simmons if he was related to the earlier “W. J. Simmons” of Alabama, the retired Citizens Councils administrator would only say he didn’t “talk about the old days.” (The consensus is that Simmons was “probably not” related.)

Numerous Sovereignty Commission files (http://mississippisovereigntycommission.com/) show that Simmons spied on civil rights groups, shared information with agencies including the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, and was not bashful in asking that civil rights advocates be harassed.

In March 1964, for instance, a Sovereignty Commission report showed Simmons was able to get his hands on grand jury testimony about civil rights leader Medgar Evers. Zack J. Van Landingham, a Sovereignty Commission investigator, reported having a meeting with district Attorney Bob Nichols “with reference to the testimony of Medgar Evers before a Grand Jury in Hinds County some months ago.”

Landingham states in his report that “Mr. Nichols advised that he had furnished copies of this testimony to Mr. W .J. Simmons, head of the Citizens’ Council, and Governor J.P. Coleman. He said he had only 1 copy left. I told him I would endeavor to get hold of Governor Coleman’s copy. Mr. Nichols stated that if I was unsuccessful in securing the Governor’s copy to come see him again, and he would see that I got a copy…Mr. Nichols advised that there was considerable information relative to the NAACP in Mississippi in this testimony. He said, however, that Evers had been caught in several lies in giving this testimony.”

Years earlier, on September 18, 1959, Van Landingham reported that Simmons contacted him about an upcoming Southern Christian Ministers Conference of Mississippi that included Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. along with other speakers from around the country. Simmons wanted “these speakers coming here from out of the state…harassed as much as possible.”

Simmons said he specifically wanted Dr. King “arrested by the police, taken down, fingerprinted and photographed” [and that he] had already “conferred with Chief of Detectives Pierce about such procedures.”
Van Landingham spoke with Sam Ivy, director of the Bureau of Identification and reported, “Arrangements were made whereby we could use the recording instrument of the Mississippi Highway Patrol…I will take some steps to see what pressure can be brought to bear on any of [the speakers] and possibly get the meeting cancelled.”

In his work on an unrelated project, psychology researcher Dr. William Tucker of Rutgers University by chance discovered numerous connections between Simmons and the money used to fight the Civil Rights Act of 1964. For instance, records of the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission show the agency was notified on September 12, 1963, by Morgan Guaranty Trust Company of an “anonymous gift” of one hundred thousand dollars granted under condition the source of the gift would be kept confidential. The money, actually coming from Draper’s Pioneer Fund, was used in the fight against civil rights, Sovereignty Commission files confirm.

Even more Draper funds would come into Mississippi once the purse strings were untied, with much of the money to be handed out and eventually controlled by Simmons. In later years, Simmons ran a bed and breakfast in Jackson and he eventually died at the age of 92 in November of 2007.

From the Land of Emmett Till: The Delta's White Citizens Councils Still Bring Controversey

2010-12-21T10:43:00.005-06:00

White Citizens Councils Filled With Good Guys? If He Really Thinks So, Gov. Haley Barbour Could Use a Mississippi History Lesson

By Susan Klopfer, author

Who Killed Emmett Till and Where Rebels Roost; Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited

Now Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour asks us to see history through his eyes. Recently, this governor stated the Citizens Council that he first joined while living in Yazoo City was only a good group of men who wanted to better their city and clean up the schools, that it was a nice group of guys dedicated to fixing segregation and righting other wrongs.

After living in the Mississippi Delta for several years, and spending years reading and studying its history, I most heartedly disagree. Here’s what I know about the Citizens Councils, a group that is still operating, and not to the benefit of any of us who care about civil rights, human rights, social justice and equal education.

Citizens Councils came about soon after Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Handed down on May 17, 1954, the Warren Court's unanimous (9–0) decision stated that "separate educational facilities are inherently unequal." As a result, de jure racial segregation (segregation required by law) was ruled a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution. This ruling paved the way for integration and the civil rights movement.

Reacting to Brown, the first Citizens Council, a unique white Mississippi organization, was quickly formed on July 11, 1954, a year before Emmett Till was lynched, in the Sunflower County seat of Indianola at the home of D.H. Hawkins, manager of a local cotton compress. (Young Till was actually beaten and killed in a Sunflower County barn one year later, about 25 miles away, following Brown II, the Supreme Court Decision that decreed dismantling of separate school systems for blacks and whites could proceed with "all deliberate speed," a phrase that pleased neither supporters or opponents of integration.)

The first Council members pledged to fight integration with any means necessary, including using the services of the newly invigorated Ku Klux Klan, according to their own minutes. Growth was rapid, and by 1959, with the election of Governor Ross Barnett, a “Councilor” himself, the Citizen’s Councils were in tight control of the state.

CITIZENS COUNCILS FOUNDER, Robert B. “Tut” Patterson, managed a 1,500-acre cotton plantation in Leflore County. Charter members for Patterson’s Citizens Council included Arthur B. Clark, a Harvard-educated lawyer; Herman Moore, an Indianola banker and Hawkins, along with the town mayor, the county sheriff, a farmer with large landholdings, a smaller farmer, a farm manager, a dentist, a gin operator, a farm implement dealer, two auto dealers, a druggist, and a hardware merchant. All men, state the councils minutes, “pledged at the charter meeting to preserve segregation and called for a public meeting at the Indianola town hall one week later.”

The second meeting attracted between 70 and 100 white men who were told by Moore the meeting “should have been held 30 years ago … when it was very noticeable that the Negro was organizing…Then there was a light in every Negro church, every night, regardless of the time you passed…The Negro continued to meet and organize and through their concerted efforts, with the help of what I believe to be subversive groups and others, have made them a force to be reckoned with.”

Then “cutting to the heart of the matter,” Clark told those gathered “the solution to this problem [enforced desegregation] may become easier if various agitators and the like could be removed from the communities in which they operate.” This would be done through “economic pressure upon those men who cannot be controlled otherwise.”

Patterson was motivated enough to spend the rest of his life growing Citizens Councils and their neo-Nazi successor, the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC) because – he often told others – he did not want his daughter to attend elementary school with black children, whom he detested.

But in his book, Let The People Decide, historian Dr. J. Todd Moye wrote that Patterson, even before Brown, had “railed against the two-headed monster of miscegenation and Communism… [and] portrayed himself as a modern-day Paul Revere in a desperate race to warn his neighbors of the dangers that approached.”

Citizens Councils soon became the most powerful organization in Mississippi dedicated to preserving white supremacy; within two years, there were more than 200,000 members in 60 council chapters throughout the South, half of them in Mississippi alone. In November 1954, the Citizens Councils published a pamphlet to let others know what they were about, declaring:

“The Citizens' Council is the South's answer to the mongrelizers. We will not be integrated! We are proud of our white blood and our white heritage of six centuries…If we are bigoted, prejudiced, un-American etc., so were George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and other illustrious forebears who believed in segregation. We choose the old paths of our founding fathers and refuse to appease anyone, even the internationalists.”

Citizens Councils quickly responded to the NAACP as it assisted its branches in petitioning local school boards to desegregate. The Sunflower County Citizens Council in July organized a boycott of all African Americans who signed the school desegregation petition. Then in Yazoo City, names of the fifty-three professionals who signed the petition were printed in the local paper. All who signed were either fired, boycotted, forced to remove their names or forced to leave town.

Shortly after the first Citizens Councils became a reality, the New York Post sent a reporter into the Deep South on a fact-finding mission. Reporter Stan Optowsky spoke plainly in his assessment, calling the Councils “a loose federation [with the] avowed purpose [to] battle the principle and practice of integration, and to crush all – the Negro and white – who dare advocate the colored man’s rights.” After spending five weeks doing research, the reporter declared the “actual purpose was to elect the right’ candidate; to maintain cheap labor; to eliminate a gnawing business competitor; to protect a shaky job; and to make ‘a few fast bucks.’”

“The success of this movement is staggering.” Optowsky wrote. “It collects about $2 million a year in dues, and does not account for one penny to its members. It induces Jews to belong to an anti-Semite organization; it pressures Catholics into joining an anti-Catholic organization. Even its enemies live in such terror that they literally beg not to be identified publicly, lest they be socially and financially ruined in a matter of months.”

While the first Councils meeting was secret, the Post reporter claimed to have a copy of the meeting’s first speech, given by banker Herman Moore “who makes this very frank admission: ‘The best thing, we think, is to put him (the Negro) right where we have stayed for 30 years and keep him guessing.’”

According to the Post reporter, Councils made a “special point of snuffing out the dangers of the Negro as a political force. Many of their units had formed committees to check the voting registration and purge it of Negroes through loss of job or threats of violence.

“Mississippi, with the nation’s largest Negro population, has 13 counties without a single Negro voter and nine more with less than six Negro voters … although these pressures upon Negroes by the Councils are well known, there’s a less publicized but even greater danger [that] whites, too, are subjected to the same terror if they dare stray from the most rigid segregation line,” Optowsky wrote.

The domination, he suggested, was total. Wrote the Post reporter, “There is no middle ground, no shade of gray. Only black and white. And woe betide the black! ‘Stand up and be counted’ is the rallying cry at each Council organization meeting, and once, in Alabama, a newspaper reporter who didn’t stand up simply because he was writing at the press bench was lifted bodily by two burly rednecks… Business men are badgered by delegations to join up or face boycotts. Ministers are booted from their jobs without ceremony if they protest. With people worked up as they are, it was inevitable that the Ku Klux Klan would simultaneously rise from the dead…The Klan does not claim the niceties which the Councils wear as their mantle. They’re back to flogging again.”

Meanwhile, Patterson’s neighbor, the notorious Senator James O. Eastland from nearby Doddsville, wanted to grow an even larger organization for himself. In the summer of 1955, Eastland announced it was “essential” that a nation-wide organization be set up to “mobilize and organize public opinion” throughout the United States in order to combat school desegregation. The senator said that a “great crusade” would be required to fight the NAACP, CIO, and “all the conscienceless pressure groups who are attempting our destruction.”

Within a month of Eastland’s statement, the Federation for Constitutional Government (FCG), a short-lived organization, was formed in Memphis. Representatives from twelve Southern states came together with the support of Eastland, Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, former Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi, U. S. Representative John Bell Williams of Mississippi, and other politicians.

Patterson, Judge Thomas Brady and William J. Simmons were elected to positions on the executive committee. John U. Bar of Louisiana was selected president, and it was Eastland’s intention that the Federation would “coordinate” the work of the Citizens Councils and several other organizations.

Many members of the Citizens Councils did not share this view, however, and in April 1956, sixty-five representatives from Citizens Councils in eleven Southern states secretly met to form their own “overseer,” the Citizens Councils of America. The following October, CCA selected Patterson as secretary.

From 1954 to 1989, Patterson spent his time growing the Citizens Councils, as he traveled thousands of miles around the Southeastern states to meet with members and their leaders. As Council numbers grew to over 300,000 members, Eastland helped out, by calling on state governments to fund the movement, even though he was not in control.

Within the first three years, Citizens Councils overseers were freely using the television stations of the U. S. Congress to produce a fifteen minute television program, Citizens Council Forum, broadcast weekly on twelve television stations in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, and Virginia, courtesy of Eastland.

Councils’ work expanded as the organization grew. Once the Civil Rights Act of 1960 was passed, authorizing judges to appoint referees to help blacks register and vote, the CCA called for establishing a separate African American state, for passage of the African repatriation bill sponsored by U. S. Senator Russell Long (D-LA), and for a “Negro relocation plan” that would distribute the South’s “surplus” blacks evenly among the states.

Several CCA chapters forced evicted black families onto buses headed out of the region and some Citizens Councils ran Reverse Freedom Rides, sending black volunteers into the North as a publicity stunt supporting voluntary migration and resettlement of blacks. “The plantation bloc seemed to be laughing at the entire nation as it made a joke out of its mass destruction of the African American rural community.”

Years later, in 1985, Gordon Le Baum helped Patterson co-found the Council of Conservative Citizens (CCC), the CCA offshoot. Baum had been a regional director in the first Citizens Councils. Patterson remained actively involved in CCC, and was still writing for the organization’s journal, The Informer in 2005, when I personally visited him in his Indianola home.

An Intelligence Report from the Southern Poverty Law Center reported that names of CC members are not public. But after collecting the names of 175 members mentioned in council publications and elsewhere, the Report “was able to document ties to racist groups of 17 of those members — almost 10 percent of the total.” Claiming 15,000 members in 1999, CC was in the news when Mississippi Sen. Trent Lot landed in hot water after it was revealed he spoke before the group again in 2005, as various state legislators and judges were scheduled to attend CC meetings.

While the presence and degree of racism in the CC varies from chapter to chapter, the SPLC report found “a significant number of members have been linked to unabashedly racist groups including the Invisible Empire Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; the National Association for the Advancement of White People; the America First Party; and the neo-Nazi National Alliance. Others have ties to militant ‘Patriot’ organizations such as the extreme-right-wing Populist Party and David Duke.”

And so, I can easily say that Gov. Haley Barbour isn’t much of a historian, at least when it comes to the Citizens Councils organization of which he is a proud member.

From the land of Emmett Till: Suicide or Murder in Leflore County? NAACP wants to know

2010-12-18T03:39:00.000-06:00

Mississippi hanging death warrants FBI-level scrutiny

The Leflore County NAACP in Greenwood, Miss, is closely watching local police officials as they investigate the hanging death of a 26-year- old man, reports the Tri-State Defender. Judge Greg Mathis (left) writes in the online issue of his daily newspaper the NAACP has a right to be on alert... Leflore County is just miles away from where 14-year-old Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. The death of Till is considered by many the spark that started the civil rights movement.

"Frederick Jermaine Carter was mentally ill but, according to his family, was on medication. When he wandered off, his relatives didn’t think much about it – he’s done that before. But many in the local community were shocked to find the young man, three days later, hanging from a tree in a wealthy white neighborhood, an area most residents say few blacks ever visit. The local coroner has ruled the death a suicide but too many questions remain, including this one: How did the young man manage to hang himself from the tree, without assistance?"

Judge Mathis continues his report --

New York Times - Emmett Till Archives

2010-12-16T10:46:00.000-06:00

The New York Times keeps a fascinating archives of all Emmett Till stories written by its staffers. Take a peek here.

Some recent articles include:
Scant Progress in Effort on Old Racial Killings
Emmett Till’s Coffin Goes to Museum
After Inquiry, Grand Jury Refuses to Issue New Indictments in Till Case
Remembering a Boy, His Savage Murder and Racial Injustice in Mississippi
The Ghosts of Emmett Till
The afterlife of David Jackson's shocking photo of Emmett Till.\

And more -- Very interesting reading, even though the articles only go back to 2002.

Land of Emmett Till: Still No Civil Rights Museum in Mississippi

2010-12-13T01:45:00.000-06:00

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (front left) walked in the funeral procession for Medgar Evers in June 1963. Evers was shot and killed in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Miss. (File/Associated Press)

JACKSON, Miss. — Mississippi bred some of the worst violence of the civil rights era, yet nearly a half-century after a barrage of atrocities pricked the conscience of the nation, it is one of the few civil rights battleground states with no museum to commemorate the era.

Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, was bludgeoned to death for “sassing’’ a white woman and his body dumped in the Tallahatchie River in 1955. Mississippi NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers was gunned down outside his home by a white sniper in 1963. And three young voter registration activists — James Chaney of Mississippi and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both of New York —were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan during the Freedom Summer of 1964.

By Shelia Byrd, Associated Press / December 12, 2010
Continued --

Land of Emmett Till: Prosecutor Candidate's Father Inspirational Civil Rights Figure

2010-11-22T10:41:00.000-06:00

From the Desoto Times Tribune -- Chatham relying on experience

By ROBERT LEE LONG
Community Editor

HERNANDO — Gerald Chatham, a candidate for Circuit Court Judge, District 17, Place 4 says his courtroom experience and career as a former prosecutor will serve him well if elected. Chatham's opponent in Tuesday's runoff election is attorney Robert S. "Stan" Little Jr.

Chatham, a longtime Hernando attorney and former district attorney, is a well-known trial lawyer with roots in DeSoto County that go back several generations.

Chatham, whose father served as district attorney and former DeSoto County School Superintendent as well as county attorney, serves as his "hero" and role model.

"His ideals were lofty and were something I was very proud of," Chatham said. "I was not your typical young man. I didn't want to be a fireman or a doctor. I always wanted to be a lawyer like him. I idolized him. I have pretty much patterned my career after him. He left me a tremendous name and reputation I have tried to pass on to my family."

In addition to his father, another inspirational figure to Chatham is Atticus Finch, the fictional small town Southern lawyer in Harper Lee’s acclaimed novel “To Kill A Mockingbird.”

As an 11 year-old, Chatham watched his father try to prosecute two white men for the 1955 brutal beating death of a 14 year-old black child from Chicago named Emmett Till. Chatham's father lost the case, but he won respect in the eyes of his young son.

"The legacy he left me was certainly some big shoes to fill," Chatham said.

Story continued --

Michigan Journalist Speaks on 'The Power of Your Story' - Includes Emmett Till Story For Emphasis

2010-11-15T21:13:00.002-06:00

The story of young Emmett Till, the 14-year-old killed in Mississippi after whistling at a white woman in 1955, is a powerful story that helped bring on the modern civil rights movement, a Michigan journalist tells middle school students, as he uses this example to illustrate the importance of telling stories.

"Of course, [students] are intimately familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, the woman whose principled stand to remain seated on a segregated Birmingham bus helped chart the course of a society. But it’s Till — the 14-year-old black Northerner who was brutally murdered in Mississippi supposedly for whistling at a white woman — whose story seems to grab them and not let go," notes Journalist Clayton Hardiman of The Muskegon Chronicle, in recapping his recent visit with young students.

Hardiman, speaking to a group of middle school students, illustrates his point with the story of Emmett Till. "There is no way, really, to see the world from another human being’s perspective, but stories offer as close a thing to a glimpse as we can manage. They can be like random particles in a nuclear physics experiment. But when they are shared and heard and believed and accepted, they have the capacity to recharge the world."

Read on --

http://www.mlive.com/opinion/muskegon/index.ssf/2010/11/clayton_hardiman_the_power_of_2.html

School Library Journal Staff Recognizes New Emmett Till Book

2010-11-05T16:22:00.001-05:00

"This first person testimony about the kidnapping of Emmett Till will captivate readers who search for the truth and appreciate the kind of perspective that only a loved one can offer. Wright, tells the story of his cousin Emmett Till's visit to Mississippi, Till's fateful encounter with a white store clerk, and ultimate kidnapping and murder. This title gives readers the back-room story of an event that changed United States history."

WRIGHT, Simeon. with Herb Boydjjk. Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till. Lawrence Hill. 2010. Tr $ 19.95. ISBN 978-1-55652-783-8.
+ + +

I was also very impressed with Simeon's Story and wrote this review for Amazon:

Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till
by Simeon Wright
Edition: Hardcover
Price: $14.96
Availability: In Stock

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful: When You Read Simeon's Story, You Are Transported There, January 7, 2010

This review is from: Simeon's Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till (Hardcover)

This is the best book to read on Emmett Till, to date -- whether you have read every other book on his story or if this is your first. I'm just about in the first group, having read most major books on the murder of this 14-year-old from Chicago that took place in 1955 in the Mississippi Delta. I became an initiate to the Emmett Till story after living in the Delta, near the location where Till was killed. I have been to the grocery story in Money, viewed the site of the shed where he was killed, seen where his body was dumped into the Tallahatchie River and have walked into the Sumner courthouse where the trial took place. Some older people still living in the Delta have shared details from a personal perspective, enriching this story for my benefit. But all of my questions were not answered until reading "Simeon's Story."

Simeon Wright's book adds the missing parts. Wright was physically there in Money with his cousin as they walked into the Bryant grocery store and had contact with Carolyn Bryant. So when I picked up Wright's book and began reading, I couldn't put it down. Through his words, I could now close my eyes and be there with the two young men as events unfolded leading to the death of Emmett Till.

So many new details and keen observations kept me reading; Wright offers the kind of first-hand details that breathe life into this key modern civil rights moment, the event that sparked Rosa Parks to take her stand. After turning the last page of "Simeon's Story," I now have a much better feel of who this young man was, how he approached life, and how he got himself entangled into such a mess that ended his life. I can better visualize what took place in the grocery story and then in the early hours of Aug. 28, 1955 when Till was kidnapped from the Wright's home. I felt the some of the terror that Emmett and the Wright family must have experience that morning. And I better understand the current politics surrounding this cold case, since Wright has offered his explanation of today's politics surrounding the cold case initiative.

It's a good thing that Simeon Wright waited to write his book. Otherwise, his critical assessment might have been lost amid the more historically expansive books written by important historians, journalists and others that have helped us understand the Till story and its place in the modern civil rights movement.

Wright's book, written from his heart and coming to us so many years later, is our dessert.

+ + + You can read all of my Amazon reviews at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A3I6D4H2BC014N/ref=cm_pdp_rev_more?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview#R24ULLPK3O5U66

New Memphis, Tennessee Museum Archive to Feature Emmett Till Artifacts

2010-11-01T14:53:00.000-05:00

MEMPHIS, TN (WMC-TV) - A museum featuring the work of a civil rights icon will open early next year, organizers said Thursday. A vast collection of Ernest Withers' work will soon be displayed at the Withers Collection Museum and Gallery on Beale Street. The Withers archive consists of more than one million images, including everything from Memphis music, to the Emmett Till murder trial, and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

continue -- http://www.wmctv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13367081

My gift to you (or continued gift update)

2010-11-01T01:30:00.000-05:00

Hi Friend,

I would like to send you a gift to brighten your day. My gift is an invitation to receive QuoteActions, or to continue receiving this free gift. These short email messages contain an interesting or inspirational quote followed by a recommended action to help brighten your day. I've found QuoteActions give me a welcome break from my everyday routine -- it's like refreshing your web browser!

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"You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
John Wooden, Legendary Basketball Coach

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Today Fifth Anniversary of Rosa Parks' Death; Parks' Act of Civil Disobedience Sparked by Emmett Till's Murder

2010-10-24T23:26:00.004-05:00

Born on February 4, 1913, Rosa Parks, the mother of the Civil Rights Movement, was born in Tuskegee, Alabama as Rosa Louise McCauley. Her family background was diverse, a blend of African-American, Scots-Irish and Cherokee-Creek. After her parents, James and Leona, separated, Rosa and her family moved to Montgomery, Alabama, where she attended several schools until forced to care for her ailing grandmother and later, for her mother, too.

At the time, Alabama practiced the segregation of the ‘Jim Crow’ laws. This included separate seating arrangements on public transportation. Buses had a section for whites-only in the front of the bus, while blacks had to sit in the back of the bus. Rosa recalls “I’d see the bus pass every day… But to me, that was a way of life, we had no choice but to accept what was the custom. The bus was among the first ways I realized there was a black world and a white world.”

In 1932, Rosa married Raymond Parks, a barber who was a member of the NAACP. She later joined herself in 1943 and became very active in the Civil Rights Movement in Montgomery. While working at the Maxwell Air Force Base in 1944, Rosa got a taste of what life was like in a non-segregated world. Being Federal property, there was no racial divisions, even the trolley Rosa rode to work each day was integrated. After the war, Rosa continued to work with the NAACP and the Voters League to push for equality. As the years unfolded, tensions began to escalate.

In 1955, the murder of Emmett Till, a 14-year old boy accused of flirting with a 21-year old white woman, raised much attention and outrage. Earlier, the murders of two activists in the Civil Rights Movement, George W. Lee and Lamar Smith, had taken place in Mississippi. The men who killed young Till were found innocent by a jury of all white men in September of 1955. Then four days after attending a rally to protest their murders, Rosa boarded Bus No. 2857 on December 1, 1955. She sat in the 5th row of the bus, which was not a designated ‘whites-only’ seat, only the first four rows were. But as the bus picked up more passengers, there were not enough for all of the whites. The bus driver, James F. Blake, moved the sign designating where blacks could sit back to make room, but Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat. Blake called police and had her arrested.

This story continues -- Here

2010-10-20T19:25:00.002-05:00

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http://twitter.com/@sklopfer

From the Land of Emmett Till: NYT Columnists Tells Story of The Scott Sisters, Held In MS Prison For Robbery They Didn't Commit

2010-10-12T13:23:00.000-05:00

Op-Ed Columnist
‘So Utterly Inhumane’By BOB HERBERT
Published: October 12, 2010

"You have to believe that somebody really had it in for the Scott sisters, Jamie and Gladys. They have always insisted that they had nothing to do with a robbery that occurred near the small town of Forest, Miss., on Christmas Eve in 1993. It was not the kind of crime to cause a stir. No one was hurt and perhaps $11 was taken.

"Jamie was 21 at the time and Gladys just 19. But what has happened to them takes your breath away..."

New York Times Story continues ---

CBS News Analyst Talks About Famous Court Cases; Includes Emmett Till

2010-10-11T11:52:00.000-05:00

From The Daily Progress
By Sharon C. Fitzgerald
Daily Progress Correspondent

Celebrities and politics have shaped verdicts in the courtroom long before the days of O.J. Simpson and Timothy McVeigh, said CBS News legal analyst Jack Ford.

Ford, who covered the Simpson and McVeigh trials during his years at TruTV, was the guest speaker Friday at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs public forum series.

Ford said courtroom trials are “prisms that allow you to look into the events of the time.” He said various aspects of celebrity — race, politics and war — seem to always find their way into the courtroom.

“[Trials] are like sepia snapshots,” Ford told a packed audience Friday. “They allow us to see who we were then and how we are different.”

Ford talked about three famous court cases...finishing his talk on the case of Emmett Till, the Mississippi murder trial that followed the killing of Till, a black 14-year-old, in 1955. The youth was beaten and shot to death after he reportedly flirted with a white woman.

This story on Jack Ford and Emmett Till, Continued --

My gift to you

2010-10-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

Hi Friend,

I would like to send you a gift to brighten your day. My gift is an invitation to receive QuoteActions. These short email messages contain an interesting or inspirational quote followed by a recommended action to help brighten your day. I've found QuoteActions give me a welcome break from my everyday routine -- it's like refreshing your web browser!

An example...

"You cannot live a perfect day without doing something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
John Wooden, Legendary Basketball Coach

Your action for today is to make an anonymous donation or do something nice for someone without them finding out you did it.

Enjoy my QuoteActions. There's no charge. They're trusted, safe and secure. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Just click on this link to opt-in. Important--look for another email asking you to confirm it was you who opted-in.

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I hope you'll accept my gift today!

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Iowa Master Teacher Reviews Freedom Summer Book; Recalls Emmett Till Story

2010-09-28T06:50:00.001-05:00

In the non-fiction section, I selected "Freedom Summer," by Bruce Watson, published in June, 2010. As I scanned the pictorial section, the images brought back memories of that time.

I was 13, and through the visual medium of television, I had seen the coverage of the assassination of JFK in November of 1963 and The Beatles appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in February of 1964.

Now, the pictures of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney -- three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in June of 1964; and the menacing faces of Lawrence Rainey and Cecil Price -- sheriff and deputy sheriff of Neshoba County, the setting of the murders; took me back to a time when my emerging consciousness began to question the ways of the world.

I needed to move beyond the impressions of those visual images.

I checked out the book and began reading it that evening.

Master Teacher Dennis Healey of Dubuque, Iowa continues his story...

Southern Poverty Law Center's Mix It Up Day Set For Nov. 9; Participate in the Name of Emmett Till

2010-09-14T14:33:00.000-05:00

If you know the story of Emmett Till, you will recognize the importance of promoting and becoming involved in the National Mix It Up For Lunch Day, a national campaign to improve intergroup relations, reduce prejudice and build inclusive learning communities. It is a part of the Teaching Tolerance program developed by the Southern Poverty Law Council.

Here's how it works:

1. What is Mix It Up?

Mix It Up is a national campaign to improve intergroup relations, reduce prejudice and build inclusive learning communities.

Students thrive—socially and academically—in schools that are inclusive. Mix It Up encourages students to identify, question and cross social boundaries that separate them from other students.

This year, Mix It Up at Lunch Day is Tuesday, November 9. Students identify the cafeteria as the place where divisions are most clearly drawn. The Day is a simple call to action, asking students to move out of their comfort zones and connect with someone new over lunch.

2. Getting Started

Register It’s easy, answer a few questions about your school and put it on the Mix It Up Map. We’ll take it from there. We’ll confirm your participation and sign you up to receive our Teaching Tolerance newsletter and other helpful resources to make your Mix It Up at Lunch Day a success.

Join Teaching Tolerance’s online community at www.tolerance.org, Facebook and Twitter to share ideas and strategies.

Organize Mix It Up at Lunch Day is a school-wide effort. The most successful events involve teachers, counselors, students, administrators and staff in planning the day.

Ask administrators and cafeteria staff to put Mix It Up at Lunch Day on the school and district calendar. Reach out to school clubs, before- and after-school programs, parents, student leaders, athletes and coaches early in your planning process.

3. Building Support Enthusiasm is contagious! Social scientists have shown that interactions across group lines can help reduce prejudice. When students interact with those who are different from them, biases and misperceptions can fall away. That’s good stuff!

Engage parents and teachers by sharing how Mix It Up works to help students develop an appreciation for difference and equips them with the skills to learn and grow in an increasingly diverse world.

4. Create Buzz On and Off Campus Don’t wait until Mix Day to advertise, build buzz early and often! Download free Mix It Up poster tiles for a fun class or club project and plaster them all across campus. Print the flier and send to district and community leaders inviting them to be a part of your Mix Day. Encourage your local television and radio stations to spread the word about Mix It Up at Lunch Day—and invite them to come to your school and report on the Day.

5. Involving Your Students Take a walk across most any school campus and you’ll find the social groups are easily identified. The athletes sit in this corner, the outcasts in the opposite corner, and the preppies in the middle. Students know the rules: enter the cafeteria and take a seat with your group—don’t deviate.

Educate students about Mix It Up concepts like social boundaries and cliques. Use our easy to implement lessons and activities, like the school survey, that prompt students to identify and examine divisions within their school community. Tabulate the results and build your own “Mixer” lessons and activities to address your school’s unique needs.

6. Mix It Up at Lunch Day Remember, thousands of other schools all across the country are Mixing up today, too. Your school is now part of a national movement to encourage students to get to know someone new by taking a new seat at lunch.

Start the day with an announcement from the school intercom system. Check the Mix It Up Map to find out how many other schools are participating and which schools in your area are Mixing It Up. Spread the word across campus. You’re not alone. Gather together your volunteers, and implement your Mix It Up at Lunch Day plan.

Visit the Teaching Tolerance webpage, Facebook page and Twitter for updates all day long. And, don’t forget to submit stories and pictures about Mix Day at your school.

Emmett Till Author Gives Free Diversity Seminar; Free $500 Gift For Attending

2010-09-13T16:45:00.000-05:00

IMPORTANT MESSAGE: If you would like to participate in an upcoming FREE online workshop on "Five Costly Diversity Mistakes Companies Make -- And How to Avoid Them" (and receive a special bonus offer just for attending, valued at $500), see below to choose the best time and date for you :

Mon, Sep 20, 2010 1:00 PM - 1:30 PM CDT
Tue, Sep 21, 2010 9:00 PM - 9:30 PM CDT
Thu, Sep 23, 2010 10:00 AM - 10:30 AM CDT
Fri, Sep 24, 2010 2:00 PM - 2:30 PM CDT

This online workshop is PACKED with important New information. Well worth paying to attend -- but you get to attend without charge (my gift). And you receive a bonus valued at $500. So Hurry...

Murder of Emmett Till, 1955, Still Has Effect on 68-Year-Old Man; Member 'Little Rock Nine'

2010-09-11T23:03:00.001-05:00

Terrence Roberts, one of the "Little Rock Nine," a group of black students who broke racial barriers during the tense desegregation of an Arkansas high school, shared this and other stories Friday night at the Plaza Resort and Spa. He spoke at the Volusia County-Daytona Beach Branch NAACP's 37th annual Freedom Fund and Awards Banquet.

"There were things going on that I didn't understand," Roberts said of the discrimination he encountered regularly as a child in Arkansas. "I was shocked. The irrationality of it was the first thing."

Roberts, now a 68-year-old clinical psychologist in California, recounted his fear when Emmett Till, a black boy his own age, was killed in neighboring Mississippi.

His Story --

American Post Racial? Not Quite -- how about racial forgetful?

2010-09-10T01:01:00.002-05:00

Young Emmett Till, murdered Aug. 28, 1955 in the Mississippi Delta.

"The reactions to Attorney General Eric Holder’s pronouncement in February 2009 that America is a “nation of cowards” when it comes to racial matters largely seemed to prove his point. Dismissing Holder as “needlessly provocative,” America retreated back into its corner and turned its back on the potential for a real conversation on its racial past."

Asher Smith, writing for Emory University's student newspaper shares his thoughts on the idea that American is "post racial," mentioning the murder of Emmett Till as he makes his point. Editor in Chief Asher Smith is a College senior from Great Neck, N.Y. It's a beautifully written article and provides some important history. He continues:

"Neither should the legacy of as violent a pejorative as the n-word, but that’s a conversation we had a couple weeks ago, too. And during July’s public drama over Shirley Sherrod’s botched dismissal from her Department of Agriculture post, the issue was raised of whether the extrajudicial murder of Shirley Sherrod’s father — he was shot to death outside of a courthouse — qualified as a lynching. (The American Spectator’s Jeffrey Lord attempted to argue that only those left hanging from trees can be described as victims of lynchings. Instead of reciting the litany of reasons why this stance completely defies logic, I will just add that this perspective requires one to believe that Emmett Till was never lynched.)"
Still more --

My gift to you

2010-09-03T11:50:00.000-05:00

Emmett Till Q and A's; The Questions People Often Ask about this 1955 Crime That Sparked the Modern Civil Rigths Movement

2010-09-02T00:21:00.002-05:00

Whenever I speak about Emmett Till and other Mississippi murders, I get interesting questions from audience members. Here are several ...

First question, often asked: Is the Emmett Till story still important? Do people still care?

Emmett Till's murder took place over 54 years ago, back in 1955, and yet we are just beginning to learn the details of the crime. Till was a young man known only by his family and friends, but the truth of his lynching remains an important key to understanding American history. Further, the truth about young Till's murder and the truth about the murders of so many others — including President John F. Kennedy, Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy — is crucial to maintaining our democracy, because in a free government ... truth matters.

In each of these murders, there have been numerous threats to the uncovering and exposure of the truth. These threats have often come from within our own government, through such programs as COINTELPRO, a secretive series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), officially from1956 to 1971.

While the FBI's COINTELPRO was aimed at "investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations" around the entire country, Mississippi had its own such secret spy agency, the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission. This Commission spied and disrupted, with the help of the Ku Klux Klan, those people who aided in black voter registration and racial integration.

The Sovereignty Commission was formed only one year after Emmett Till's death, the same year as COINTELPRO, because of the pressure the state was receiving from the federal government. Former FBI and military intelligence agents were hired by Mississippi and used as Commission investigators. Ironically, the very federal government that was applying pressure on Mississippi to change, was also using the FBI and COINTELPRO to disrupt many people and organizations trying to bring positive change to the state, often tagging these people as Communists or simply dangerous.

Thanks to people who care about historical truth, their research on Emmett Till, COINTELPRO and the assassinations of our country's peace-seeking leaders continues to bring out new evidence. And as this truth becomes apparent, it serves to keep us free.

Yes, Emmett Till's story still matters. And as the 83,000 "Emmett Till" entries listed on Google as of 11:34 p.m. September 26, 2009, attest, the Emmett Till story continues to hold an important place in history. The story of 14-year-old Emmett Till remains important and people still care. Thank God.

Q.What kind of a boy was Emmett Till?

“I would say that to me, Emmett was very ordinary. But as I look at today’s youth, I realize that Emmett was very extraordinary,” his mother once told historian Devery Anderson who interviewed Mrs. Till Mobley in 1996. She described her son as responsible and industrious, a youngster who helped her clean, cook and do laundry, recognizing the importance of his help as a single mother. Anderson’s site is at emmetttillmurder.com.

In her book, Emmett’s mother gives a further glimpse of her son, however. “Emmet was always so confident about his ability to talk his way through things that you could forget that he still had a problem talking. After he had recovered from polio as quickly as he had done, at such an early age, the doctors figured he could lick this problem [stuttering], too And we did everything we were supposed to do. The speech therapy classes had helped some, but the stutter was still apparent at eleven and then at twelve, in normal conversation, but especially when he got excited.” Later, she also terms her son as “meticulous” and “independent.”

Young Emmett had just finished the seventh grade at the all-black McCosh Elementary School on Chicago's South Side when he went to Mississippi. He was between five-foot- four and five-foot-five and weighed 160 pounds, was physically stocky and muscular. Various authors write he was self-assured despite a speech defect--a stutter that resulted from a bout with nonparalytic polio at the age of three. Emmett was a smart dresser with a reputation as a prankster and a risk taker.

Q. What happened to Emmett Till’s father?

Louis Till, drafted in World War II, was convicted of raping two women and killing a third. He was executed by the U.S. Army, which originally told Till's wife, Mamie, only that he had been killed due to "willful misconduct.

One Chicago woman, J. Marie Green, a military retiree who studied black history and is an independent civil rights researcher, remembers Till’s murder and has spent years investigating what happened to his father. She wrote this comment on my blog,

“Emmett Till’s murder is something one never forgets. I was born and raised in Chicago, and was about five years old when he was killed and remember when it happened and saw the Jet magazine photos, and I was scared to death, shocked really and questioned my mother who was from Greenwood, Mississippi, asking her why would two grown men would kill a child and what is a "wolf whistle", and are these men coming after us? “She assured me that these men where not coming to get us, explained what a "wolf whistle" was and meant in relations to that, and as a side bar note, told me that I ask too many questions. (smile). But every child in our area was afraid for a long time. Over the years I have never forgotten him, and have read just about everything I have come across about him every time his name is mentioned somewhere. Just recently his name came up again, with the incident at Burr Oak Cemetery. Somehow I feel his death is not resolved.

“…Mrs. Till’s husband's story is another whole story all by itself. Pvt. Louis Till was part of the 177th Port Company, 397th Battalion — an all-"negro" battalion — which left from a NY port and arrived in France during 1944. He was hanged by execution by the U.S. Army on July 2, 1945. by orders of General Eisenhower. Allegedly for the murder of Anna Zanchi, and the rape of Benni Lucretzia and Frieda Muri who lived in Civitavecchia, Italy, these crime supposedly occurred on June 27, 1944, shortly after he arrived, mind you!

“According to records found at The American Battle Monuments Commission, Pvt. Louis Till is buried in an unmarked, prohibited, isolated area of Oise-Aisne Cemetery in Fere-en-Tardenois, France. The military marked his personnel file and the courts-martial records "secret," hushed it up, sent Mrs. Till a telegram, stating that her husband had died because of "misconduct," and she never knew what happened to him until her son's trial, when the Senators pulled some strings and contacted the military and some Staff Judge Advocate General, crossed out the word "secret" and released the information to them.

“Even after the trial of Emmett, she could never get any answers to what happened to her husband and why he was killed, this is clearly a military "railroad job," and has been hushed up all these years for a reason, but if you would check military history during this period you will see that a lot of black men were mysteriously hung for rape of French women. "They" took racism right on with them and convinced the French that "Negroes" had a problem, too.”

Q. Why do people sometimes refer to the University of Mississippi as Ole Miss?

The University got its nickname "Ole Miss" via a contest in 1897. That same year, the student yearbook was being published for the first time. As a way to find a name for the book, a contest was held to solicit suggestions from the student body. Elma Meek, a student at the time, submitted the winning entry of Ole Miss. This name was chosen not only for the yearbook, but also became the name by which the University is now known.

Ole Miss, as used by the University, is not a substitute for "Old Mississippi." Rather, this endearing term stands for the wife of the "Ole Massah" on a plantation (the man who enslaved and mistreated Africans).

U of Miss. publicity agents claim the name is thought of in an affectionate manner, today. To check this out, I walked around the campus one day and asked some of the black students what they thought about this nickname and its history. Most were well aware of the story and several said they were disgusted. “It’s just embarrassing,” one student said. “I wish the school would change it.”

Q. Who is your favorite Mississippi hero?

Reading The Fire Ever Burning by Constance Curry and Aaron Henry helped get me started on this journey. Henry was a true hero and someone I would have wanted to know.

Henry was a fierce champion of civil rights, a leader of the Mississippi chapter of the NAACP and a member of the Mississippi House of Representatives. He is still one of the most revered civil rights leaders in Mississippi, at least by many older civil rights advocates who know their state’s history.

Henry grew up near Clarksdale, Mississippi, and later earned a degree in political science at Xavier University in New Orleans. During World War II, he served as a staff sergeant with the U.S. Army in the Pacific. After the war, Henry attended pharmacy school, and eventually returned to Clarksdale to open a corner drug store where any important civil rights and government leaders met to unite Mississippi blacks in fighting white supremacy. Sadly, the pharmacy no longer stands in Clarksdale. His home was also demolished in a fire.

There were many personal tragedies in Henry’s life as well as successes. In 1961, Henry led a highly successful boycott of stores in the Clarksdale, Mississippi, area that refused to hire black workers and discriminated against black customers. He and six others were arrested for “conspiring to withhold trade.”

These charges were eventually reversed on appeal but another charge, of sexual harassment, against Henry, soon followed came soon after. While he was fighting this case, which he eventually won, his pharmacy was firebombed and his wife, Nicole, was fired from her job as a public school teacher. Several years later, Medgar Evers was assassinated in 1963 after taking Henry to the airport.

For Henry, there was no such thing as a small victory and because each victory usually led to an even greater success. "I think," Henry once said, "that every time a man stands for an ideal or speaks out against injustice, he sends out a tiny ripple of hope."

After the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the number of black voters grew rapidly and as African Americans began to be elected winning elections to various local, county and statewide offices. Henry was elected to serve in the State House of Representatives in 1982, a post he held until 1996 where he continued to fight against racial injustice.

Henry introduced legislation to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag and continued to call for the reopening of the murder case for his old friend, Medgar Evers. Aaron Henry suffered a stroke in 1996, and died on May 19, 1997 in Clarksdale, Mississippi, just two months and five days after the murder of his friend, Cleve McDowell.

Q. Can I see a movie about Emmett Till

Yes, thanks to Keith Beauchamp, a young man who saw the photograph of Emmett Till's brutally beaten face that ran on the cover Jet magazine and became a civil rights activist in 2004. Beauchamp directed The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till that is available on DVD. Till's murder has yet to be solved and Beauchamp said he is committing his energy to solving this and other civil rights cold cases. We owe him our extreme thanks and appreciation for his tenacity, perseverance and dedication to the cause of civil rights.

Q. What’s happening these days in Mississippi?

Many activities are going on — some good and some disgusting. Friends of Justice is a nonprofit organization working to uphold due process for all Americans with the goal of building a public consensus behind equal access to justice and respect for human dignity in our criminal justice system, according to Executive Director, Dr. Alan Bean.

Friends of Justice formed in response to the infamous Tulia drug sting of 1999 in which 47 people, 39 of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of an undercover agent, he explains.

The unique group emerged as a coalition of defendant’s defendants' families and other concerned citizens who believed the defendants were being prosecuted on faulty evidence. "Because of the work of Friends of Justice, the Texas Legislature passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony."

Learning from their experience in Tulia, Friends of Justice started organizing across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi.

"We launch narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice. For more on our work, check their blog at http://friendsofjustice.wordpress.com/blog/

A wrongful conviction in a murder trial recently actually brought FOJ to Mississippi. In July 1996, four people were killed execution style at a Montgomery County furniture store: owner Bertha Tardy, bookkeeper Carmen Rigby, and two hired men, Bobo Stewart and Robert Golden. Golden was black, the other three victims were white. Six months later, Curtis Flowers, a young black Winona resident - who had worked three days for Bertha Tardy - was arrested and charged with the brutal murder of four innocent people.

Thirteen years, $300,000 and now six trials later, Mr. Flowers remains behind bars and during which the state has been unable to obtain a final conviction.

Dr. Bean’s group believes that the state’s theory of the murder crime accused of a Winona company's former worker, by Flowers, "... doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phony evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses." Details of the Curtis Flowers case are shared at the FOJ website in a story titled, "A brief primer in wrongful conviction. You can find more at http://www.friendsofjustice.com/.

A similar but unrelated ongoing case occurred three years earlier on December 24, 1993 when Scott County Sheriff's Department arrested sisters Gladys and Jamie Scott for an armed robbery they in which they vehemently deny participation in. In 1994 they were convicted after being implicated in the crime by three young black men who confessed to the robbery in exchange of a plea bargain that gave them 10 ten months. The sisters were not offered a plea and went to trial, each receiving two life sentences for a crime that netted 11 eleven dollars where no one was injured.

Don’t think these cases happen only in Mississippi. Another comparable case involves an Illinois social justice group seeking 11,000 signatures to present a petition to Illinois Governor Pat Quinn to order DNA testing to exonerate Johnnie Lee Savory.

Convicted of double murder by an all-white jury in 1977 at the age of fourteen, Johnnie Savory served thirty years in prison for a crime he did not commit, the group asserts. Released on parole in 2006, Savory still had not been officially exonerated by fall of 2009. After his release from prison, Johnnie attended a play about Emmett Till and found himself overwhelmed with emotion as he related to the horrible fate of another innocent fourteen-year old child. Johnnie’s deep connection to Emmett was cemented when he discovered that they share the same birthday, July 25th.

Johnnie and Emmett’s cases both represent a state-sponsored denial of justice and the loss of innocence for children, for communities of color, and for our entire nation, committee members said.

"However, these stories also are a part of a collective story for change, they contribute to the struggle for justice. Emmett’s death sparked change in this nation and his mother ensured that his legacy lives on for eternity. While Emmett’s voice was silenced, the strength and courage of so many in the civil rights movement allowed for their collective voice to be heard and heeded."

Also happening in Mississippi...

Even though the cold case is very famous, most Mississippi students have never heard of Emmett Till. And they haven’t been taught about the 1964 Freedom Summer when 1,000 volunteers swept into the state to register black voters.

Students haven’t heard of Fannie Lou Hamer or the story of Mae Bertha Carter, who defied gunfire and the loss of employment to send her children to previously all-white public schools in Drew, eventually winning a legal battle that confirmed their right to be there. “They don't know about ordinary citizens who faced extraordinary odds to bring change,” wrote Carmen K. Sisson, Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor in the October 4, 2009 edition.

“But they're going to know all about it soon. In a groundbreaking reform — believed to be the first in the nation — Mississippi will require civil rights as part of its U.S. history curriculum. McComb schools made that move in 2006; but starting next fall, the stories of the civil rights era will be taught — and tested — in all public schools.”

This is going to be tough. But if Mississippi allows outside historians to participate and leaders refused refuse to be compromised, and if truth is the bottom line, the education program could set an example for the rest of this country.

Most states have their own civil rights histories that have not been covered. The stories are hidden and some might quite possibly just as horrid as what happened in Mississippi, especially in the western states where genocide was practiced on Native Americans and on the eastern seaboard where many wealthy families made their fortunes from the slave trade.

Even in my own (current) state of Iowa, the incarceration rate of blacks compared to the incarceration rate of whites is the highest in the nation. There is plenty of history to be researched and acted upon. Good jobs abound for citizen journalists.

Q. Why is it so important to think so much about the past?

I like to remember a quote by Winston Churchill, what he had to say about the importance of knowing our history: “The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see.”

Q. Is there anything else important to know about all of this?

Unfortunately, there is something else that must be addressed. Old-fashioned Citizens Councils still meet around Mississippi and some politicians openly say it is perfectly acceptable to become members and attend meetings and special events.

When questioned about these organizations and their memberships, they slip slide away, typically answering they don’t agree with everything the councils stand for but they “do lots of good things, too.”

Anniversary of Emmett Till's Murder; Saturday, Aug. 28

2010-08-27T09:00:00.002-05:00

This Saturday is the 55th anniversary of the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till, an incident that galvanized the modern civil rights movement. (Left, the shed where Till was murdered on Aug. 28, 1955 outside of Drew, Mississippi. Photo by Susan Klopfer.)

In observance, the Emmett Till Foundation today kicks off a weekend of observances commemorating the 55th anniversary of his murder with its "A Time of Reflection and Remembrance" gala. On Saturday, the foundation will launch the "Never Again" campaign against social injustice, which continues the positive activist message of Till's late mother, Mamie Till Mobley.

The campaign includes the pledge:

I pledge to never again allow the ugly parts of our past history to become the present.
I will forever stand up against racism, hatred, injustice and crimes against our youth.
I will always stand up for peace, justice and equality for all.

The campaign's launch is on the actual anniversary of Till's lynching, which shares the same historic date of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president.

For decades, Emmett Till's story has been defined by justice denied and justice delayed. But there is now an effort to mark a new and more hopeful chapter in the story of the Chicago teen whose savage killing galvanized the civil rights movement.

"We want to make sure people understand what hate looks like, and Emmett's story includes all of that. But where do we go from there? We want to flip the script on injustice and move forward," said Deborah Watts, co-founder and president of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.

Read more from the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-x-c-emmett-till-foundation-campaig20100827,0,1316443.story

Meanwhile, a second group, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission has requested permission to place one marker in front of the location of the former grocery store called Bryant’s where Till allegedly whistled at a white woman, and another marker at the East Money Church of God.

Read more at http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=15361

And an unnamed businessman from Texas is seeking to restore the grocery story in Money, Mississippi when young Till whistled at a white woman, a gesture that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Today, Jerry Mitchel from Jackson, Mississippi wrote about the plan: http://blogs.clarionledger.com/jmitchell/2010/08/27/restoring-history-before-its-too-late/

Do you know the story of Emmett Till? I am always surprised at how many people don’t know this story or recognize its historical significance. Recently, I met an anthropologist from a well-known Midwestern university who had never heard of Till. After telling her the story, she was deeply concerned that neither she or her students knew about Till. The story is still quite new and is just now becoming part of contemporary history taught in schools. But it is an important story and your children should hear it. Is your school teaching this history? Call and ask. You will be surprised.

If you don't know this story (and the history of the modern civil rights movement), please pick up a book and start reading. Or, check out my ebook, Who Killed Emmett Till? You can download half of this book for free!!

Go to Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/b/8175 for a free sample.

Susan

Some say that Till's death kicked off the civil rights movement, but this is not so. The civil rights movement began the day that people were enslaved and brought to this country. There are many historical accounts of black men and women resisting enslavement starting back then. After the Civil War, following the First World War and leading into the Second World War, there are stories of significant attempts by individuals and groups to overcome enslavement and mistreatment. Till's 1955 murder caught the attention of Rosa Parks who then refused to sit at the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who then took the reigns of the modern civil rights movement.

Story of the Woman Who Raised Emmett Till; Aug. 28, 55th Anniversary of Till's Murder

2010-08-23T10:16:00.002-05:00

We are coming up on the 55th anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till (Aug. 28, 1955). Here is a story about Emmett's mother that I recently learned: The story goes that during a course Mamie Till-Mobley took at the Chicago Teachers College in 1957, where she was the oldest student in the class, she chose her son as the subject of an assigned speech. After giving the speech, there was a long silence in the classroom until someone meekly asked the professor what grade he thought her speech deserved. "To grade it would be to diminish it," he replied.

Read more from storyteller BRUCE KAUFFMANN --

Alvin Sykes, Long-Time Emmett Till Investigator, Pushes Kansas City Police to Open Cold Case of Black Political Leader

2010-08-14T16:21:00.004-05:00

The decision to re-open what has become Kansas City's Coldest Case comes after civil rights advocate Alvin Sykes has been pushing Kansas City police and the FBI to work together in reinvestigating the murder of black political leader Leon Jordan.

Sykes is probably best known for persuading federal and Mississippi officials to reopen one of the nation’s most infamous civil rights murder cases: the 1955 beating death of 14-year-old Emmett Till. It took 50 years to find the murder weapon in the Till case.

As part of his Emmett Till Justice Campaign effort, Sykes met with city police officials shortly after The Kansas City Star’s anniversary story and apparently helped persuade the chief to take another look at the case. Now, police spokesman Capt. Rich Lockhart acknowledges that earlier reviews may have been inadequate.

“We originally thought that there had been a pretty extensive review of this case throughout time,” he told Mike McGraw of The Star. “But the review that we thought had been done, we can’t really figure out when it was done or who did it.

“We want to look at those fingerprint cards using modern techniques to try and enhance them and see if they will tell us anything about whose they might be — they are still unidentified.”

According to McGraw, as the probe begins anew, "Sykes is turning his attention to the U.S. Department of Justice. He met recently with Tom Perez, assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, to try to convince him that it’s also time for federal officials to take another look at the case."

More about this decision is reported by McGraw.

Meanwhile, the 55th anniversary of Till's murder takes place August 28.

On that day in 1955, a young 14-year-old Chicago teen's murder forced the nation to look at the horror of racism. His death soon ignited the Civil Rights Movement after Rosa Parks reacted to the release of Till's murderers who were found innocent by an all white jury in Sumner, Mississippi. Parks decided the time had arrived for her to take her stand on racism and civil rights by refusing to sit at the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

Till had been a visitor in the Mississippi Delta, his mother not realizing the hatred spewing throughout the South only three months after the Supreme Court considered arguments by the schools requesting relief from the 1954 Brown v. the Topeka Board of Education decision, concerning the task of desegregation. In this second decision which became known as "Brown II" the court delegated the task of carrying out school desegregation to district courts with orders that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed," a phrase traceable to Francis Thompson's poem, The Hound of Heaven.

Two quick and devistating Mississippi murders of blacks involved in the voting rights movement took place shortly before Till visited Money, Mississippi, the home of his relatives, where he was quickly killed for whistling at a white woman in a small community grocery store in the cotton hamlet of Money, Mississippi.

Four years ago, Till's relatives and friends of family members gathered at the final resting place of Till to lay wreaths at his grave site at the Chicago Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL., calling it a Token of Reflections and Remembrance.

"Thank you for having the bravery. Thank you for bearing the prejudices of our world. Thank you for your courage all these 50 years," said Deborah Watts, Till's cousin and founder-president of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, as she led the tribute. "We will move forward with hope and we will move forward in your spirit."
* * *
Susan Klopfer, MBA, helps organizations discover and implement diversity plans. Visit Susan's website to learn about her free online workshop, Five Costly Diversity Mistakes Companies Make and How To Avoid Them. http://susanklopfer.com/

No Good Sense or Patience; the Stuff of Civil Rights Unsung Heroes

2010-07-27T13:17:00.001-05:00

Adlena Hamlett, a Mississippi Delta teacher who "didn't have the good sense to be patient and stay put."

"History may be written by the letter writers, but it's made by people who didn't have the good sense to be patient and stay put."

Was reading a review on Freedom Riders, a film that delves into the transformation of a group of twelve scrappy activists to a series of events that over the course of six months made the world hold its breath while fundamental political, social and cultural ideologies were put to the test in the hills of Alabama and Mississippi. Freedom Riders was screened last January 21-31 at the Sundance Film Festival.

Of course the film and story are fascinating, but it was this comment by the reviewer (Steady Diet of Film Blog) that hit me and I will store and use it for a very long time. As the writer of Emmett Till and Mississippi Deelta history, and having spent years in the Delta tracking down story after story, I can attest to its accuracy.

Over and over I have been amazed and awed at the tenacity of regular people who didn't stay put or be patient from the days of slavery until the modern civil rights movement. Their stories are of Biblical proportions. I think often, for instance, of Rev. Horace Germany who left a comfortable life in Indiana to live in Northern Mississippi where he was nearly beaten to death for trying to start a small school to train young African Americans to help poor black Delta families survive through agriculture. It was the white Citizens Councils that finally slowed him down.

But even in the end, Rev. Germany's accomplishments were great. As were the accomplishments of Fannie Lou Hamer, Aaron Henry, Amzie Moore, Cleve McDowell, Birdia Keglar, Adlena Hamlett and so many more unsung heroes I've had the pleasure of learning about. All beautiful people who put patience aside to strive for change, and this comment adds real meaning to those of us who humbly collect their magnificent stories.

Sample Chapter, TOC; Who Killed Emmett Till?

2010-07-25T14:59:00.002-05:00

Just posted a sample chapter and Table of Contents from my newest book, Who Killed Emmett Till? You can access from this link or go to the Pages Section and select the TOC Sample link.

I became interested in the Till case and the Mississippi Delta when Fred and I moved to Mississippi and lived on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary. It was quite an experience and I grew to really enjoy meeting and talking with people who were living in the region during the modern civil rights movement. Actually, I even became angry as I learned pieces of all of the history I was NOT taught in high school or college.

Go take a look, and then send me some comments. Thanks, Susan

One Year Later, Future of Burr Oak Cemetery Uncertain; Site of Emmett Till's Grave

2010-07-24T22:30:00.000-05:00

I was actually surprised to see a story on Emmett Till and Burr Oak Cemetery carried by the Las Vegas Sun. First of all, Nevada is not a very civil rights conscious state. And it is so far away from Chicago. But the story of Burr Oak Cemetery gathered quite a bit of news last summer when it was learned there had been a tremendous problem there with attendants who were making money by not following cemetery rules -- fortunately, young Till's body was found to be undisturbed. Here are a few paragraphs from the Associated Press story and a link..

Louella Johnson has spent the last year hoping for answers.

More than a dozen of the Chicago woman's relatives, including her daughter, mother and grandparents, were buried at Burr Oak Cemetery, a historic black graveyard where a gruesome desecration scandal was discovered last summer.

Bodies were found double-buried and human remains were thrown into a grassy field, which authorities allege was part of a moneymaking scheme stretching back years.
"Sometimes when I start thinking about it, I think I'm going to lose my mind," said Johnson, a 65-year-old retired postal worker. "It still hurts. That's like reliving my mother's death all over again."
Hundreds of families are in the same situation a year later, as the future of the suburban Chicago cemetery that is the resting place of civil rights-era lynching victim Emmett Till remains in limbo.

The Associated Press

Wednesday, July 14, 2010
12:06 a.m.

Continued --

Workplace violence, discrimination topics in Diversity Online Workshop

2010-07-20T11:30:00.002-05:00

Dear Bloggers:

I'm presenting a free 30-minute online workshop on Five Costly Diversity Mistakes Companies Make -- And How to Avoid Them. The workshop is set for Tuesday, July 27 at 2 p.m. and bloggers are invited.

All participants will receive a special bonus offer for attending, valued at $500. To register, go to https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/265131664.

Hope to "see" you there. -- Susan

PLEASE DO REPLY..

2010-07-19T01:08:00.000-05:00

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Gerald Weissinger Chatham, the lawyer who tried to prosecute two men for killing Emmett Till, memorialized

2010-07-16T02:45:00.000-05:00

From the Desoto Times of Mississippi comes this story:

Former DA honored with dedication

Hernando Woman’s Club members Libby Ballard and Janie Norwood serve punch and cookies to a crowd of more than 100 during the clock tower dedication Wednesday. Photo by Jon Alverson

By ROBERT LEE LONG

Community Editor

Published: Thursday, July 15, 2010 1:06 AM CDT

HERNANDO - While Gerald Weissinger Chatham might not have stood as tall as the imposing clock tower dedicated in his honor Wednesday, he was a giant in the eyes of Jimmy McElroy who grew up as a childhood friend of Chatham's only son and namesake.

"To me he was 10-feet tall," McElroy said of the elder Chatham, now deceased, as a crowd of more than 100 people gathered in the sweltering heat to pay tribute to Chatham and the efforts of the Hernando Woman's Club which launched the concept of a clock tower on the historic Hernando Square in 2004.

McElroy said Chatham, a former district attorney, is remembered by the world as the white Mississippi attorney who tried to prosecute two white men for the murder of a young black teenager, Emmett Till, in 1955.

This story continues here...

To Kill a Mockingbird, Scottsboro Eight and Emmett Till; all signatures of the Jim Crow times

2010-07-02T10:46:00.001-05:00

Ask anyone which American novels they read at school, and Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) will almost certainly feature. One of the most commercially, critically and pedagogically successful works of all time, this novel about a lawyer's family in the 1930s Deep South won the 1961 Pulitzer Prize, has sold more than 30 million copies, and featured on the majority of reading lists ever since. British librarians called it a book "every adult should read before they die", while Publishing Triangle listed it as one of the 100 best lesbian and gay novels (as a lesbian "coming-of-age" tale). A special edition (Arrow, £6.99) has been published to mark, in the blurb's words, "the fiftieth anniversary of this unforgettable classic".

Read more --

After 50 years, Harper Lee's only novel remains an icon of literature – and law.

By Helen Taylor

'Seeing Emmett Till's Face in the Southeast'

2010-05-29T21:56:00.002-05:00

In 1955, after 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and brutally murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi, Mamie Till Mobley had her son's casket left open at his memorial service. She did this not just to remind the murderers what they had done; it was to remind the world, to remind a growing, interlocked network of communities, activists and political leaders what the turmoil of segregation and violence had wrought.

Closing in on the 44th anniversary of young Till's lynching in Mississippi, R. Dwayne Betts Bowie, writing in the Sunday, May 23, 2010 Washington Post, recalls the story of Mrs. Till's brave decision as he tells of his experiences participating as a panel member for a project sponsored by the D.C. Humanities Council and Provisions Library. Bowie took part in a discussion of Ernest J. Gaines's searing novel "A Lesson Before Dying," the book chosen for the citywide "Big Read" program.

Part of a panel that arrived at the event, and expecting to discuss how Gaines's work could offer insights to those who are part of the lives of the more than 900 young people in the DYRS system, Bowie tells his story:

"I first read "A Lesson Before Dying" as a 16-year-old locked up for carjacking in a Virginia jail. It was the first book I ever read cover to cover, and the questions it raises have haunted me ever since. The cells I was confined to were a long way from the death row of Gaines's story, but they were just as much a place where black boys went to be forgotten. I wanted to suggest to the disparate group of advocates, family members, young people and passersby that in Gaines's character Grant, we have a blueprint for how to care."

Fifty years ago, James Baldwin published a letter to his nephew in which he wrote: "You were born where you were born, and faced the future that you faced because you were black and for no other reason." Baldwin could just as easily have been writing about Southeast D.C. in 2010, even with President Obama in the White House, a Metro ride away...

More from Bowie--

Hip-hop Artist Common Tells Stanford Students How Emmett Till Story Impacted His Life

2010-05-28T15:33:00.001-05:00

Hip-hop artist Common says his sixth grade teacher had a significant influence on him and taught him a great deal about literature and writing. As a boy, the story of Emmett Till, an African American boy from Chicago who was murdered while visiting the South in 1955, had a profound impact on him.

“I knew that to achieve greatness in whatever I wanted to do, I had to work hard,” he recently told Stanford University students.

More of the Common story here --

Devery Anderson, Emmett Till Researcher, Set For Trip to UK To Learn More About Death of Louis Till

2010-05-26T07:42:00.003-05:00

Devery Anderson, Emmett Till Researcher

A great Internet resource on Emmett Till is provided by researcher Devery Anderson at http://emmetttillmurder.com/. Anderson, soon to travel to Europe where he will be further investigating the death of Till's father, Louis, writes:

This site is dedicated to a greater understanding of the murder of Emmett Louis Till, and seeks to educate people in all aspects of the case. His abduction and murder in Mississippi in August 1955, and the subsequent acquittal of his killers the following month, became not only a national story, but also put Southern relations into the international spotlight. These events became a major force in the advancement of the Civil Rights Movement. Some would even say they were the catalyst.

Although the world watched the case unfold, it has now been nearly 55 years since Emmett Till was lynched. Unfortunately, I have discovered as I speak about the case, that far too many people have either forgotten it or have never heard of it. This unfamiliarity exists even in college classrooms. The aim of this site is to provide a resource containing the most thorough, accurate, and up-to-date information that students and scholars will find helpful in their learning, writing, and teaching.

The site contains a detailed case overview, reprints of articles, original interviews and essays, links for further information, and reviews of significant published works. It will be updated regularly, and now contains documents released by the FBI that were created or discovered during their 2004-2006 investigation.

* * *

Anderson researched the background of all those involved in the murder trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam, accused of 14-year-old Till's death in 1955 in the Mississippi Delta. His site includes a Who's Who of people participating in the trial as well as other fascinating information such as an interview he conducted with Mrs. Till before her death.

It's a wonderful site to check out, especially for students and anyone who is new to this story.

Washington Post Reporter Mourns Over Funeral of Slain Black Child in Washington, D.C.

2010-05-24T08:08:00.001-05:00

In 1955, after 14-year-old Emmett Till was kidnapped and brutally murdered while visiting relatives in Mississippi, Mamie Till Mobley had her son's casket left open at his memorial service. She did this not just to remind the murderers what they had done; it was to remind the world, to remind a growing, interlocked network of communities, activists and political leaders what the turmoil of segregation and violence had wrought.

Washington Post By R. Dwayne Betts Bowie, "Seeing Emmett Till's Face in Southeast"

RACE: Are We So Different?

2010-05-22T23:37:00.000-05:00

Check out this video on "race" put out by the American Anthropological Association and then share it with others.

From the land of Emmett Till: The Assassination of Medgar Evers; The Jackson Boycott

2010-05-07T13:04:00.001-05:00

* * *

Mississippi yesterday... History of NAACP state field secretary, Medgar Evers. After working ten years throughout the state for civil and voting rights, aiding Freedom Riders and helping James Meredith enter the University of Mississippi as its first black student, Evers helped organize downtown Jackson boycott and drew anger. Soon after, he was killed in the driveway of his own home. This is an excellent video to learn more about Evers and better understand what life was like in Mississippi.

Fear of Death Still Lingers in the Mississippi Delta; Emmett Till Relative Confirms

2010-05-02T17:21:00.000-05:00

(Photo from the public domain; used with permission of Keith Beauchamp.)

Nearly 55 years after Emmett Till was killed for allegedly whistling at a white woman in the small town of Money, Miss., one of his relatives still worries that her brother might suffer violence for being a black man married to a white woman.

"There's a big fear still of seeing black boys with white girls," said Priscilla Sterling, whose grandfather was a cousin of Till's mother, in an interview with Kate Brumback of the Associated Press. "There's still this concept of they're going to look at you and they're going to get you."

"Even though my brother and his white wife live in California, where things are supposed to be better, I still have this fear that something might happen to him," she added, her voice cracking and tears streaming down her face."

Brumback's story continues --

New York Woman Has Vivid Memories Of Mississippi Childhood; Remembers The Day She Heard About Emmett Till

2010-04-23T04:19:00.001-05:00

For Senetta Smith, the road to literacy has been long. Ms. Smith, 68, talked to news reporter Clyde Haberman of the New York Times about her hardscrabble childhood in a sharecropper family in rural Mississippi, toiling in the fields from sunup to sundown.

"As vivid as yesterday for her is the day in 1955 when a man came by on horseback to tell her parents about the vicious racist murder of Emmett Till in another part of Mississippi. He was her age: 14."

Mr. Haberman reports:

Children's Book "Rosa" Brings Home the Story of Rosa Parks and Emmett Till

2010-04-07T09:21:00.002-05:00

* * * * *

Author Nikki Giovanni

It is a fairly new idea in civil rights history circles that Emmett Till's murder had anything to do with the modern civil rights movement. For certain, the young man had no expressed interest in the civil rights movement. He did not go to Mississippi to bring change, and yet his death has been observed as a spark that ignited the movement.

Several years ago, while visiting a teacher friend, Nina Zachery Black, whose grandmother, a civil rights pioneer killed in 1966 in Mississippi, we had the opportunity to discover a new book written for children about Rosa Parks. We were especially surprised to see a picture of Parks reading a newspaper about the murder of Emmett Till.

THE BOOK'S AUTHOR NIKKI GIOVANNI who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. An honors graduate from Fisk University, her grandfather's alma mater, in 1968 attended the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University and at the same time published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk. Within the next year, Giovanni published a second book, thus launching her career as a writer.

Early in her career she was dubbed the "Princess of Black Poetry," and over the course of more than three decades of publishing and lecturing she has come to be called both a "National Treasure" and, most recently, one of Oprah Winfrey's twenty-five "Living Legends."

Many of Giovanni's books have received honors and awards. Her autobiography, Gemini, was a finalist for the National Book Award; Love Poems, Blues: For All the Changes, Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea, Acolytes, and Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat were all honored with NAACP Image Awards. Blues: For All the Changes reached #4 on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list, a rare achievement for a book of poems.

Her children's picture book Rosa, the book that Nina and I "discovered" about the civil rights legend Rosa Parks, soon became a Caldecott Honors Book, and Bryan Collier, the illustrator, was given the Coretta Scott King award for best illustration. Rosa also reached #3 on The New York Times Bestseller list.

This morning, I ran into a news report that Nikki Giovanni spoke to students at Indiana University South Bend, bringing her message of committment to the fight for civil rights and equality. It was apparent the students and school reporter was enthused about her and her work -- just as Nina and I were so enthused about "Rosa."

"When Giovanni gives audiences a “history lesson” centered on her children’s book, Rosa, the lesson feels more like a conversation -- a true sharing experience as she skillfully unfolds the familiar story of Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to give up her seat as ordered by a bus driver in Montgomery, Ala.", noted reporter April Buck who found Giovanni brought Parks to life for the audience, "...sharing details of her personal acquaintance with Parks that give depth and personality to a story most have simply read about in text books.

"By painting this backdrop for Parks’ experience, Giovanni is able to incorporate the story of Emmett Till, a 14-year old African American boy from Chicago who was murdered in Money, Miss., another tragic event leading up to the Civil Rights movement that few have heard about outside the classroom."

Here is more, from Bucks.

Now I wonder if the Texas School Book Commission would ever give this author and her book a second look? Surely, I jest...

Eyes on the Prize; Tuesday, on DVD

2010-04-05T12:17:00.002-05:00

Sam Block, fifth from the left, was a Mississippi civil rights and voting rights pioneer. Block, one of the first members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC, pronounced snick) eventually left Mississippi to work in other movements including the Vietnam protest. Block, who was repeatedly beaten and imprisoned as he fought for voting rights for blacks in his native Mississippi Delta during the 1960's, died April 13, 2000 in his Los Angeles apartment, his sister Margaret said. He was 60. He once spent time in a federal prison for questionable charges and died under suspicous circumstances. His eyes were always on the prize, Margaret Block says.
* * * *

MAYBE YOU are familiar or even know quite a bit of history about Emmett Till. But how intimate are you with the history of the entire Modern Civil Rights Movement?

I didn't know much at all about this movement and its people until I found myself living in the Mississippi Delta -- in the land of Emmett Till-- and only after I began researching and meeting people who told me stories I had never heard before.

If you are seeking to learn more about this era -- to discover new stories about people like Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers -- there is some good news that begins tomorrow.

The public-television series that first aired in 1987 has finally landed on DVD and will be available Tuesday.

Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, the six-part public-television series, was first aired in 1987. The series won six Emmys and a Peabody award and eventually led to a sequel, Eyes on the Prize II.

With interviews and archival footage (some rescued from oblivion), the first Eyes covered the years 1954 to 1965, key events from the murder of Emmett Till to Montgomery and Selma, the Freedom Rides and passage of the Voting Rights Act.

And it did so with forceful storytelling that remains both fresh and timeless. Prize has been repeated from time to time, including in a current run on PBS. The second series, which covered up to 1985, is in some ways an even more impressive series because it has to deal with so much trouble and upheaval within the movement.

Henry Hampton, the executive producer and driving force behind the series, died in 1998 from illness incurred while being treated for lung cancer. But to his tribute, the series lives on.

Hampton had overseen other big projects, including series about the Great Depression and African-American arts. At the time of his death, he was working on a program about African-American faith, which like the arts series was completed by others.

Up to now, Eyes has been available only on old VHS tapes and in an expensive DVD set marketed only to educators. The new DVD, through PBS Distribution, will be through retailers; the three-disc set lists for $69.99.

And why has it taken so long? Rights issues to the music and the rights to the interviews for home use has been a challenge, reports Rich Heldenfels of the Beacon Journal.

Younger people an any of us who don't remember or were not in the same space during those years are going to see really powerful television footage and reporting.

Do you remember any scenes from the 60s?

I know that our television was turned on one day when school children were being fire hosed in Alabama. That scene has remained with me throughout my life, even though I knew so little at the time about what was happening and why. This history was not covered in my books or classrooms -- ever.

My grandmother, who I loved dearly, was upset -- for all of the wrong reasons. Living in a small Oregon town with no African Americans, it was hard for me to understand or relate to the picture on television showing that children were being treated so violently. My grandmother, who grew up in much the same racial environment, simply could not understand why the marchers were going up against authority. She was very old at the time, and this must have been very confusing for her, too.

Nonetheless, I had no opportunities in my formal education to learn anything about this miraculous movement. It was really only until I lived in Mississippi that I began to hear the stories and learn of the bravery that took place. Eyes on the Prize brings back those moments and carefully lays out what was happening and why.

Interestingly, while those six episodes covering up to 1965 were so acclaimed, the sequel did not happen easily.

Heldenfels reports that Hampton, who he knew and had interviewed about the series, “really struggled to get funding for that.”

“Eyes on the Prize I is clearly — I don't want to belittle it by saying good guys and bad guys — but it's very clear who the enemy is. When you get Eyes II, it starts to focus on the more complex kinds of resolutions of the human-rights issues that the first part presents. And then it begins to get into the different ways looked at solving the issues, including violence, of course."

Since Hampton had done so much work on civil rights, Heldenfels once asked another civil rights filmmaker what Hampton might have thought of Barack Obama becoming president. "I think he would be very proud," she told the reporter. "And I think he would be sympathetic about some of the complexities that this man is dealing with. . . . It would be terrific if Henry were still alive. I am sure he would do something from the documentary side."

That would be something, all right -- Eyes III.

The Persecution of Curtis Flowers

2010-03-17T17:24:00.009-05:00

Winona, Mississippi in days gone by.

An Interview with Dr. Alan Bean
By JOE ALLEN

DR. ALAN Bean is the executive director of Friends of Justice, a nonprofit organization that works to uphold due process in the criminal justice system. It was formed in response to the infamous Tulia, Texas, drug sting of 1999, in which forty-seven people, thirty-nine of them African Americans, were rounded up based on the false testimony of a corrupt and racist undercover agent. Bean, a local Baptist minister, played a key role in organizing to expose the Tulia travesty and working to free the defendants. The Texas legislature, in response to the work of the Friends of Justice, passed the Tulia Corroboration Bill, which has led to the exoneration of dozens of innocent people by raising the evidentiary standards for undercover testimony.

Writes Joe Allen:

"Learning from this victory, Friends of Justice established Operation Blind Justice, organizing in affected communities across Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Mississippi to restore due process protections to poor people of color. Bean and Friends of Justice played an instrumental role in publicizing the Jena 6 case, where six African-American high school students faced long prison terms after a fight with white students following the hanging of nooses on campus to intimidate Black students. Over 30,000 people marched in Jena, Louisiana, in September 2007 to protest the prosecution of the Jena 6. The charges against five of them were expunged from their records.

"Recently, Friends of Justice has turned its attention to Winona, Mississippi— a town not far from Philadelphia, where three civil rights workers were murdered in the early 1960s. There, Curtis Flowers faces his sixth trial for the same murder charge."

Counter Punch reporter Joe Allen continues
this Mississippi story of social injustice
* * *