|
In August 1955 the dead body of a 14 - year - old black boy, named Emmett Till, was found floating in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. In this year, compared to the post - Reconstruction period, when thousands of blacks were murdered, lynching was more a rare incident. But this lynching contributed to the occur of the civil rights movement.
Till was killed in Money, forty - three years before James Byrd Jr. was murdered in Jasper, also outnumbered by the white man who murdered men. The reason why Emmett Till was murdered is, that he has returned the gaze of a white woman, who was walking on the street, and that he didn't look away like black man were supposed to do. Carolyn Bryant told her husband Roy, that a black boy had flirted with her. In the middle of the night Roy Bryant and his brother seized Emmett from his great - uncle's home. They drove off, bludgeoned him, shoot him, and threw him into the river.
Emmett's great - uncle Mose Wright testified against Bryant and his brother, after that he fled Mississippi for his life. But Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam were declared not guilty by an all - white jury. A month later Milam even confessed the murder with impunity, because he felt enough public approbation. That was not surprising for the apartheid South, but the rest of the country looked at Mississippi justice and shuddered, because Emmett Till's mother had brought the dead body of her son to Chicago and had allowed his open coffin to be put on display for four days.
What has changed since 1955 and the lynching of Emmett Till? There is a greater civility. In Jasper members of the murderer of James Byrd have asked forgiveness of Byrds relatives, and a sister of the dead black man has spoken of reconciliation. There is a cause for relief, because a jury of 11 whites and one black in a small Southern town could come to the same moral conclusion, the same definition of justice.
Things have changed, but there is still racial terrorism though whites and blacks now monitor their attitudes about race. There are still killers walking around free, who were never accused and sentenced. Sometimes one might be led to surmise, that the Klan has given up white uniforms for blue ones. But there are cases in which there is still time to make good on history. Perhaps in the case of Emmett Till's mother, who is still alive. The murderers of her only son, who she has mourned over 44 years are now dead. She could never get them indicted on lesser charges, she never got their apologies. She has demanded reparations from the state Mississippi, which has never responded. It should.
|
