(Emmett Till. Image by ImageEditor via Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/11304375@N07/2534273093 )
Trigger Warning *This article includes disturbing images*
“I thought of Emmett Till, and when the bus driver told me to move to the back, I just couldn’t move.” – Rosa Parks
On the 66th anniversary of Emmett Till’s murder, FunTimes investigates racial justice reform in the United States.
It was the wee hours of August 28th, 1955, when White Americans Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam stormed into Emmett’s great uncle’s house in Money, Mississippi, and dragged the 14-year-old African American boy out of the house. After torturing Emmett, Bryant, Milam, and another unidentified accomplice took the boy to the Tallahatchie River, where they forced him to undress, struck him until he was almost dead, painfully removed his eye, shot him in the head, tied him by the neck with barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and threw him into the river. His body was recovered three days later. Due to the severity of his disfigurement, the only way his great uncle, Moses Wright, could identify him was by his initialed ring.
Their motive for this gruesome killing? Revenge over Emmett allegedly flirting or whistling at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn Bryant.
(Dr. Lisa Whittington’s Mixed Media Canvas: Emmett Till: How She Sent Him and How She Got Him Back. Image by Mississippi Civil Rights Museum via Wikimedia Commons)
In court, Bryant and Milam were unjustly convicted as not guilty of murder or kidnapping, despite the brave testimony of Moses Till, whose house the criminals kidnapped Emmitt from. Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till, chose to have an open casket at the funeral in Chicago, and images of her son’s deformed corpse brought awareness to the harsh reality of racism in America and sparked a revolution. Emmett Till’s murder catalyzed the civil rights movement, which included movements like the bus boycott, which began in December of 1955 with Rosa Parks, led by Martin Luther King Jr. In 2017, Carolyn Bryant stated that Emmett Till never harassed her.
(A Breonna Taylor protest in Washington, DC. Image by Ted Eyton via Penn Today)
Although legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has been passed to prohibit racially motivated crimes, White supremacist ideologies are still rampant throughout the United States. The new waves of activism that were sparked by the murders of people like Trayvon Martin in 2012, Breonna Taylor in 2020, George Floyd in 2019, and more, prove that the deadly impacts of racism are continuous. George Floyd’s murderer, Derek Chauvin, was sentenced to 22.5 years in prison, but unjust institutions, including the police force and the US judicial system, remain. We need more Black and brown people in governing decisions, and profound police reform. The power of visual media, from the picture of Emmett Till’s mutilated body to the video of George Floyd being murdered, will continue to play integral roles in reform for the country.
Rest in power to Emmett Till, and others who lost their lives to racism.
Works Cited
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/emmett-biography-moses-and-elizabeth-wright
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
https://www.newsweek.com/who-judge-peter-cahill-george-floyd-derek-chauvin-trial-1579515
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/25/derek-chauvin-sentencing-for-murder-of-george-floyd.html
https://prospect.org/blogs/tap/how-racist-are-republicans-very
https://www.ftc.gov/site-information/no-fear-act/protections-against-discrimination
Nana Ama Addo is a writer, multimedia strategist, film director, and storytelling artist. She graduated with a BA in Africana Studies from the College of Wooster, and has studied at the University of Ghana and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology. Nana Ama tells stories of entrepreneurship and Ghana repatriation at her brand, Asiedua’s Imprint ( www.asieduasimprint.com ).
