------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------
Black History Month 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 January 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 activists who gave their lives in the struggle for social justice--but to honor a struggle that is far from over. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but changing it is not allowed. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe wwnews- [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe [EMAIL PROTECTED] Support the voice of resistance http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php) ------------------ This message is sent to you by Workers World News Service. To subscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
