In the past two weeks, as the surge in anti-Muslim prejudice left North Americans aghast and outraged, a gut-wrenching revelation slipped under the radar and tore open old wounds, rekindling pain over a much older story of bigotry.
It’s the story of a murder so foul it terrorized American and Canadian children, stiffened Rosa Parks’ resolve to remain seated in her Alabama bus, galvanized the civil rights movements and exposed the grotesqueness of a nation’s oppressive laws.
It is impossible to dwell on the story of 14-year-old Chicago teen Emmett Till without flinching.
On Aug. 28 in 1955, the boy’s swollen, mutilated corpse was fished out of the Tallahatchie River in Drew, Miss., not far from the hamlet of Money where he was visiting relatives.
He was beaten and tortured, hanged from the beams in the ceiling of a barn. His eye was gouged out. He was shot in the head. Around his neck was a wire, a barbed wire that tied his young body to a 33 kg farm-grade fan before he was thrown in the water.
Four days before that, Till had whistled at Carolyn Bryant, the 21-year-old wife of a convenience store owner. A couple of days later, two men whisked Till away in the middle of the night.
Bryant’s husband and his half-brother were put on trial for murder. The prosecution presented witnesses who placed the accused at the scene of crime. For the defence, Bryant testified the teenager touched her and said something lewd.
Sixty-eight minutes later the jury delivered its verdict: not guilty.
Four months later, the men confessed their crime to a magazine.
Sixty-two years later, a new book reveals Bryant’s confession. She had lied.
The revelation of the 2008 confession in The Blood of Emmett TillThe Blood of Emmett Till has led Till’s family to seek a fresh investigation in the case.
It’s easy, in hindsight, to condemn the miscarriage of justice in Till’s case. It’s just as easy, it appears, to remain hostile to the Emmett Tills of today. If Till’s story refuses to disappear, it’s because the conditions that enabled it have also refused to fade away. Here are a few:
1. A white person’s word carries more weight than that of a black person
In October 2015, in an incident captured electronically, a white woman calls 911 after seeing a black man in a hoodie by a car. “He looks like he’s breaking into the car.”
The man drives off. When the police pull him over, he comes out hands in the air. The police wrestle him to the ground and start striking him.
When it turns out he is the car owner, the woman is heard sobbing. “I didn’t mean to, like, racial profile him.” “No, no, no,” say the police comforting her. “Calm down.” No such niceties for the black man injured on the road. He is arrested and charged with disobeying orders and resisting arrest.
2. Portrayal of blacks as brutes so powerful it justifies the use of force against them
Slate.com journalist Matthew Dessem unearthed a few stories on the Till case in a Jackson, Miss., paper, the Clarion-Ledger, in 1955.
Writer Tom Ethridge offers the “what about black crime?” defence by creating a false equivalence with the obviously unconscionable rape of a 17-year-old white girl in Chicago.
“She was seized by a Negro giant — a drunken soldier — who had patiently lain in wait for his innocent victim. Little Joanne was savagely beaten, raped and murdered.”
Negro giant.
Think Tamir Rice in 2014, the 12-year-old Ohio boy who was shot to death for waving a toy gun in a country awash with real guns. “He’s menacing,” said the chief of Cleveland’s police union, that would go on to endorse Donald Trump for U.S. president. “He’s 5-feet-7, 191 pounds. He wasn’t that little kid you’re seeing in pictures. He’s a 12-year-old in an adult body.”
An autopsy said Tamir’s appearance was “consistent with the reported age of 12 years old or older.”
In 1955, the Tallahatchie County Sheriff said he didn’t think the body fished out of the river was that of Till.
“The body looked more like that of a grown man instead of a young boy,” he said.
//www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/11/darren_wilson_s_racial_portrayal_of_michael_brown_as_a_superhuman_demon.htmlcalled
3. Insistence that crimes against blacks are isolated not systemic
The Clarion-Ledger in 1955: “To read the inflammatory statements from Negro leaders of the North, one would suppose that young Emmett Till was the victim of a gigantic conspiracy involving every white person in our state.”
Breitbart in 2016: “There is not a shred of evidence to support the claim that there is a hunting season on blacks.”
4. White backlash against equality movements
In 1955: “Tailor-made for NAACP purposes, the Till crime is now being used as a springboard for an organized hate campaign aimed at the entire population of this state.”
In 2016: The Southern Poverty Law Center says it has received multiple requests to label the nascent Black Lives Matter a hate group.
5. A legal system stacked against blacks
Jim Crow laws then, mass incarcerations of blacks today.
Enough said.
Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar
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