“Let the people see what they did to my boy.”
Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmitt Till’s Mother
Since 1954, the black community has been making their voices heard about racial inequalities that occur both in modern-day society and within our justice system. Not even a year after the movement started, their intentions became well-known when Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white man on a public bus. But the event that sparked outrage that fueled the motivation for the moment to provide a change to racial injustice is the death of Emmett Till. Â
During the summer of 1955, Till went to visit family members who lived down in Money, Mississippi. While visiting a store owned by Roy and Carolyn Bryant, Mrs. Bryant accused Till of whistling at her. When she told Mr. Bryant about this accusation, he and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, kidnapped him. Till was beaten, shot in the head, had a large metal fan tied to his neck with barbed wire, and his body was thrown into the Tallahatchie River. Emmett Till was 14 years old when he died. These men were willing to do this to a child. Â
Mamie Till-Mobley, Emmett Till’s mother, was devastated. To show the world what happened, Mrs. Till submitted pictures of her son’s mutilated corpse to the newspaper. Once these pictures came out, this fueled the civil rights activists to stand up against racism. Â
I remember hearing about this story when the movie adaptation of this incident came out in 2022. As I saw the trailer for the film, it made me want to research what happened. But when I read more of it, I was not prepared for how severe it was. Knowing that he died in such a brutal way and did not get justice makes me sick to my stomach. It also makes me sad and angry for his mother knowing that he was her only child, and she lost him in the worst way possible. Â
Even though he is no longer with us, Emmett Till helped start the process to invoke change. In honor of him, legislation enacted both the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, which allows investigation of civil rights murders that occurred before 1979, and the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, which made lynching a federal crime. Â
As unfortunate as it is that his death gave the world a reason to consider the dangers of racial inequality and white supremacy, I know Emmett Till is looking down on us now, being glad that people continue to fight for individuals like him that have died at the hands of racism. Even after 70 years, we continue to tell his story, and we shall tell it for more years to come. Â