How many of us are familiar with the Emmett Till story? This was yet another part of our black history I certainly wasn’t taught through the years. Hopefully more will be able to become informed about this dark history now that President Biden has signed a proclamation establishing this past week (on what would have been Emmett Till’s 82nd birthday) the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monuments in Mississippi and Illinois.
Back in 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, traveled from his home in Chicago to the Mississippi Delta to visit family. While there, he was accused of making inappropriate advances toward a white female grocery clerk. Emmett’s cousins and friends, who were present at the scene, disputed that claim…four days later, Emmett was pulled from his bed, kidnapped, and brutally murdered by at least two white men (even though his accuser, decades later, admitted she had lied). Three days following this abduction, on August 31, 1955, Emmett Till’s mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River.
His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, an active member of her Chicago community, became a civil rights activist after his murder. She quickly sought justice for her child, demanding his casket be transported home unsealed, and then insisting his mangled corpse be shown to the world. Wow…what a statement of bravery during those challenging Jim Crow years!
So this important part of our history is not forgotten, President Biden proclaimed a total of three sites that help tell this tragic story:
- Graball Landing, Glendora, Mississippi: where Emmett Till’s disfigured body is believed to have been found early in the morning of Aug. 31, 1955, by a Black teenager fishing.
- Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi: where the five-day murder trial of the two men who kidnapped and killed Till, took place. With just over an hour of deliberation, the all-white, all-male jury acquitted the men of murdering Till. One juror told Time magazine, “If we hadn’t stopped to drink pop, it wouldn’t have taken that long.” The two admitted to the murder in a magazine article just a few months after the verdict. (Sadly, no one was ever held legally accountable for Emmett Till’s death.)
Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago where Till’s open-casket memorial service was held early September 1955, drawing tens of thousands of people who responded to Mamie Till-Mobley’s public cry that the world see what racists in Mississippi did to her son. Inside the church, the casket held Till’s bloated, disfigured corpse under a thick glass panel. An estimated 25,000 people viewed the body at the Saturday service. The church was filled to capacity, while another estimated 10,000 people stood outside listening to the service over loudspeakers.
Hate Continues: Signs placed by the Emmett Till Memorial Commission have been vandalized many times… the first one torn down and thrown in the river and two more signs shot up with bullets. As of this writing a New York company has sent the latest signage to this location…made of steel and weighs 500 pounds so that it cannot be vandalized or thrown into the water. Seriously? This is what it takes? How pathetic and disappointing the hate continues 68 years later. How can we heal the hate?
I found this timely short, but powerful meditation on Insight Timer titled: “You Can Heal the World”
We are one with existence at all times and complete…nothing you have to gain…nothing there to compete. Your true self is perfection, divine light and just pure. Start to love your own being and you will find the cure. You are part of the world…you are one with it all…there is no separation…start to break down the wall. Your own healing potential is enormous and real and by nature your state is to love and to heal. Within you is the answer and it always has been even though maybe hidden full of fear and not seen. It is time to remember the real treasure you hold…dare to open the door and let healing unfold. Go inside and take care of what’s keeping you blind…reaching up to the soul and the truth you will find. Heal your own world at first, come to peace deep within… that’s how you change the world and let healing begin.
Spiritual Meditation: Humanity’s greatest and hardest mystery is figuring out we are all brothers and sisters. – Daily Medicine