NO JUSTICE? NO PEACE!
Reopen the case of Emmett Till
By Monica Moorehead
NAACP President Kwesi Mfume sent a letter to Mississippi
Attorney General Michael Moore on Jan. 31, urging that the case
of Emmett Till be reopened.
In 1955, Emmet Till, a 14-year-old African American, was
kidnapped, tortured and murdered by three rabid white
segregationists in Money, Miss. Two of the murderers, Roy
Bryant and J.W. Milam, were acquitted by an all-white jury
after just five days of testimony.
Four months after the trial, Bryant and Milam admitted in a
Look magazine article that they indeed murdered Till. They
provided all the gory details, knowing that legally they could
not be retried.
Mfume stressed in his Jan uary letter: "With the recent
passing of Mamie Till Mobley, who fought tirelessly to see
justice done in the killing of her son, it is now time to
address what remains an ugly mark on the history of Mississippi
and the United States. Her extraordinary acts of courage must
not be in vain."
In January the Public Broadcasting Service aired a one-hour
documentary titled "The Murder of Emmett Till." Interviews with
Ms. Mobley just before her death and also more than 48 years
ago are part of this film. The documentary won a special prize
for its Black director, Stanley Nelson, at the recent Sundance
Film Festival.
What led to lynching of teenager?
The Till documentary helped introduce a whole new generation
not only to what happened to this youth, but also to the
objective factors that led to this horrific lynching.
Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago to parents who
had migrated North, as did millions of Black people, to escape
the oppressive South. He traveled to the heart of the
Mississippi Delta to visit an uncle in late August 1955.
Upon his departure, his mother warned him that the attitudes
of whites in Money toward Black people were "different" from
whites in Chicago, even though both cities were ruled by
segregation.
As in many Southern towns during that era, Black people
faced physical and verbal assault just for walking on the same
side of the street as whites. White men viewed Black men as
"threats" to white women. Therefore, Black men were strongly
"encouraged" to bow their heads and not utter a word to any
white woman they approached.
Right before Till went to Money, two Black activists trying
to carrying out voter registration were lynched.
These were examples of the political and social climate that
governed the economic conditions of semi-slavery in the South.
This was the Southern plantation atmosphere, foreign to Till
and other young, first-born generation Northern Black
people.
Roy Bryant owned a store frequented by Black sharecroppers.
Till and some friends bought some candy there. As Till was
leaving the store, Bryant's wife alleged that the teenager, who
suffered from a speech impediment, whistled at her.
Several days later, in the middle of the night, Bryant,
Milam and another white man kidnapped the teenager at gunpoint
from his uncle's house.
Willie Reed, a sharecropper who worked for Milam, stated
that he heard Till being beaten by the three men in a tool
shed. He heard the teen ager screaming. A blood- soaked Till
was then driven to the banks of the Tallahatchie River where he
was shot point-blank in the head.
A cotton gin fan was tied around his neck with wire. His
body was tossed in the river, where it was found days later.
After Reed was forced to wash Till's blood from the back of the
truck, he disappeared.
The murder of Emmett Till made national and international
headlines. Fifty thousand Black people turned out for his
funeral in Chicago.
His mother demanded that his coffin be opened so that the
whole world could bear witness that her son's face was
mutilated beyond recognition due to the savage beating he
received with the butt of a .45-caliber pistol.
Sham of a trial
The so-called trial of Bryant and Milam took place in
Sumner, Miss., in a hostile, racist atmosphere. U.S. Rep.
Charles Diggs of Detroit, an African American, attended the
trial where Black and white people were segregated in the
courtroom.
After Reed reappeared to bravely testify about what he had
seen and heard on the night of Till's abduction, he was
smuggled out of town. Later he was hospitalized with a nervous
breakdown.
Mose Wright, Till's uncle, also came forward to testify that
Bryant and Milam were the abductors of his nephew. He, too, was
forced to leave town. He never returned to Money.
The jurors could be heard laughing during their
"deliberations." One juror stated publicly that they would have
returned with the not-guilty verdict sooner but stalled to try
to give the appearance of fairness.
After the verdict was announced, the sharecroppers in Money
shut down Bryant's store with a powerful boycott.
Mamie Till spoke all over the country. She told outraged
audiences of thousands in the North, predominantly Black, about
the sham of a trial her son's killers received and how she
would not rest until he received real justice.
She sent telegrams to President Dwight Eisenhower and FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover, requesting that the federal
government intervene in her son's case.
Not only didn't the U.S. government intervene, Eisenhower
did not even respond to her telegram.
This is another blatant example of the complicity between
the local and federal governments in covering up countless
murders including not only Till's but those of civil-rights
activists like Medgar Evers, Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner
and James Chaney.
The persistence of civil-rights activists-- along with
powerful documentaries like those focusing on Till or the 1963
Birmingham church bombing in Spike Lee's moving documentary
"Four Little Girls"--has helped to finally reopen these cases
decades after the murders.
Another example of justice denied was reported in a
front-page article in the Jan. 26 New York Times. The Times
reported on efforts to bring to trial a Klansman who, together
with two other Klan members, kidnapped Black farmhand Ben
Chester White in 1966 and riddled him with bullets. White was
chosen at random by the KKK. The Klan used the murder as a ploy
to lure Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Mississippi in a plot to
assassinate the civil-rights leader.
Till murder spurs civil rights movement
Emmett Till was lynched one year after the U.S. Supreme
Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education that outlawed
segregation in public schools.
One hundred days after the Till lynching Rosa Parks, a Black
seamstress, refused to give up her seat to a white man in
Montgomery, Ala. Her arrest sparked the successful Montgomery
bus boycott which in turn helped launch the massive
civil-rights struggle.
Mamie Till Mobley never stopped fighting for justice. She
died on Jan. 6 at the age of 81. Shortly after her death,
Illinois Gov. George Ryan paid tribute to her in his historic
speech in which he explained why he was shutting down Illinois'
death row to show his opposition to the death penalty.
In response to the Jan. 31 Mfume letter, Mississippi
Attorney General Moore publicly stated that because much of the
evidence from the original trial has been "lost," and both
Bryant and Milam have died, he sees no point in reopening the
case.
What about the detailed confession by Bryant and Milam in
Look magazine? Is that not proof enough of who is responsible
for this senseless, cold-blooded killing of a 14-year-old
boy?
Moore has the authority to designate an "Emmett Till Day" to
not only honor Till, his mother and all the civil-rights
activist who gave their lives in the struggle for social
justice--but to honor a struggle that is far from over.
Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
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