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It’s always my objective to stick to the facts, making observations I think obvious and speculations I think reasonable.
You, Dear Reader, can always offer your thoughts, in agreement or opposition, on the facing page.
Sixty-eight years ago last month 14-yearold Emmett Till was murdered for an encounter with the 21-year-old female proprietor of a store in Money, Mississippi, Carolyn Bryant. There is controversy over what Till said that provoked the woman’s husband and accomplice to murder him.
The Rev. Wheeler Parker, Jr., Emmett Till’s cousin and an eyewitness, said as they left the store young Till, clowning around, gave a wolf whistle. Others say he added teasingly, “Bye, baby.”
Visiting Chicagoan Emmett did not understand the line he had crossed in the segregated South. His friends did and were terrified at the penalty they knew would follow.
Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River a week later with a 70-pound cotton gin fan fastened around his neck with barbed wire.
At her husband’s and his accomplice’s trial Bryant testified in addition to the wolf whistle, Till had grabbed her around the waist.
Both men were acquitted by an all-white jury. They later admitted their crime in a Look magazine interview.
In 2017, Tim Tyson, author of “The Blood of Emmett Till,” wrote that Bryant recanted her testimony, admitting that Till had never touched, threatened, or harassed her. “Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” she said.
Contrast 14-year-old Emmett Till’s immature behavior with a 59-year-old man’s, caught on tape fifty years later bragging about his entitlement regarding women, “You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful … I just start kissing them . I don’t even wait;” “… when you’re a star they let you do it ... You can do anything.” “Grab them by the [genitals].”
He boasted more lasciviously about propositioning a married woman.
The difference? Emmett Till was African-American. “White” men can get away with being immature and insensitive to the feelings of their victims and dismiss their boasting as “locker room talk.”
Eight years after the murder of Emmett Till, on Aug. 28, 1963, 250,000 people marched on Washington to call for congressional passage of the Civil Rights Act, full integration of public schools, and a law prohibiting job discrimination.
How many of that quarter of a million Americans had tasted firsthand the scourge of racial prejudice and v iolence? Y et i t w as a p eaceful gathering, taking on the hopeful tone of one of our nation’s most iconic speeches, Dr. Martin Luther King’s impromptu “I Have a Dream” speech.
Contrast that with a gathering in Washington January 6, 2021, when a mob of a meager 10,000, at the behest of a man knowing he lost the election, attacked our nation’s Capitol in an attempt to overthrow our country’s most sacred right – our vote – and the peaceful transfer of power.
Less than three weeks after that 1963 March on Washington, on Sept. 15, demonstrating the depravity of racism in our country, a bomb went off at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. Twenty-two people were injured, and four young girls, Addie Mae Collins (14), Carole Robertson (14), Cynthia Wesley (14), and Carol Denise McNair (11) were killed.
It was not until May 22, 2002, that the last of the four men accused of these murders was convicted, bringing their crime into the present century.
On June 21, 1964, three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, were tortured and murdered by the K.K.K. with help from a deputy sheriff in Mississippi.
It galvanized our nation to finally come to grips with its racial prejudice.
Emmett Till would be in his eighties if he had survived that trip to Mississippi. He’d be a grandfather, maybe a great-grandfather. Addie Mae, Carole, Cynthia, and Carol would be in their 70s with grandchildren. Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman would be in their 80s.
They are but a fraction of the American lives cut short by the racial hatred that even as late as last month still permeates our culture.
Yet there are those who want to ignore this history. Teaching the civil rights struggle is prohibited by eisoptrophobic Americans and enabling politicians. Florida Gov. DeSantis “launched the ‘Stop W.O.K.E.’ act in Florida, requiring local schools and businesses to halt instruction that could make some groups feel they bear ‘personal responsibility’ because of their race, national origin, or sex.”
What is “ woke”? D eSantis considers “it’s the belief there are systemic injustices in American society and the need to address them.”
“Woke” topics might foster shame. DeSantis’ Florida, where “‘woke’ goes to die,” is the latest scene of racial murders in Jacksonville with a racist targeting African-Americans.
If we’re going to rewrite history because it might be disconcerting or hurtful for others, we’ll have to stop teaching World War II and the Nazi Holocaust and imperialistic Japan’s atrocities in China.
We’ll have to avoid other truths that some might find unkind for us to a cknowledge. T he p rograms of Stalin and Mao come to mind, perhaps even what Thomas Jefferson had to say about poor King George III.
After all, those “missteps” occurred long before these civil rights abuses.
Two weeks ago show the ongoing violence against people of color (who now must fear going shopping) continues while some people wish to sleep, “unwoke,” through it.
