Emmett Till

“Emmett Till,” said Jill very methodically.

“Emmett Till?” asked Jack.

“Yes, Emmett Till,” she replied.

“Who is Emmett Till?”

“He was a young man who has got me thinking about things,” answered Jill in a thoughtful tone.

“What things would those be?” asked Jack with a slight smile but sounding a bit concerned.

She looked at some distant point out of the living room window as she answered with just one word, “Racism.”

Concern etched its way across his face as he looked at her and saved the page in his book as he laid it down, “Okay, let’s skip the cryptic and tell me what this is all about, please?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Start with who is Emmett Till.”

“He was a fourteen year old young man from Chicago. His mother had come from Mississippi and after a visit by his mother’s uncle he desired to see the Mississippi land of his mother’s childhood.”

“Who doesn’t have an interest in from where their family came?” he added nodding a little.

“Exactly, but there was a problem.”

“And that would be?” he prodded.

“This was during 1955.”

“Okay,” he quickly acknowledged in a serious tone.

“Young Emmett was used to living in Chicago. His cousins and he went to a store to buy some candy. Something happened which prompted Carolyn Bryant, the owner of the store, to say Emmett made inappropriate advances towards her.”

“I see,” said Jack thoughtfully, “He was lynched.”

“Yes, Carolyn’s husband Roy and his half brother John William Milam went to Emmett’s uncle’s house and kidnapped the teen. They took him to a place and tried to dehumanize Emmett, to belittle him, to strip him of his clothes and dignity; they beat and tortured the young man. They had the young man grab a cotton gin fan. They then shot Emmett and used the fan to sink his body in the Tallahatchie River.”

“How do you know all of this?”

“I learned about it in my Modern American History course. His death was important in that it helped to spark the Civil Rights Movement. It turns out that both of his killers were acquitted.”

“Let me guess, an all white jury?”

“Yes,” she responded without a second of thought.

He shook his head, “Those were horrible times.”

“Thing is I found a copy of the ‘Look’ Magazine article which was published about it.”

“What was so important about this article?”

“This magazine paid Bryant and Milam $4,000 for their story of what happened. It is a very interesting in that it gives a very close look into the minds of these two monsters. It exposes the vulgarity, the fear, the lack of education, and the incredibly closed minds that went into making these two monsters.”

“$4,000 would be about $40,000 nowadays. It was obviously important to write.”

“Here it is,” she said as she stood up and moved over next to Jack on the sofa, “Here you can read it. It doesn’t take very long.”

She sat silently watching a bird flitting from branch to branch outside the living room window as he read the article on her tablet. It was a small bird and the branches seemed to barely acknowledge its weight as it landed. As she watched her thoughts move to what horror and fear this young man faced. She thought of being woken from a peaceful sleep in what you thought was a safe place only to be drug off into the night by two armed and determined strangers. She thought of the sounds of his relatives helplessly attempting to beg for mercy echoing in his ears. She thought of this young man witnessing his uncle offer these two brutes money to let it go. She thought how helpless Emmett’s relatives felt. She thought of the system, the situation which had taught them to be so helpless. She thought of the pride these two vicious animals felt in killing an unarmed man.

She was still thinking about the unfolding nightmare as he put the tablet down with a sigh, “You know, it is too sad to be able to predict the situation this well.”

“What are you talking about?”

“When you first told me of Emmett Till’s story I formed an image of the individuals who had done this to him.”

“How do you mean?” she asked as she picked up her tablet and moved back to her chair to be able to face him.

“I pictured in my mind, two individuals who were afraid. They were afraid more of what Emmett represented than the idea that he made any comments to Roy’s wife. They were afraid of change, of competition. They insist that they need to keep African Americans in their place. They even admitted in their own words of how the courage with which this young fourteen year old stood up to them unnerved them and frightened them the most. They were used to people who coward before them but Emmett’s strength, I think, really scared them. They even say that the strong spirit of Emmett standing up to them and because of that and their inability to break him is what precipitated the murder.”

“I agree,” added Jill, “It is a pretty weak person who needs to put others down to feel good about themselves.”

“Yes, if you need to oppress others or a need to prove you are better than others, there mustn’t be much to you at all. Two full grown men were sniveling cowards in comparison to Emmett and the sad thing is if you read their words they thought they were so superior. But how can you be so superior to someone else if all you have is or what you need is fear through violence?”

He shook his head a little as he thought.

“You mean like the Germans?”

“Huh?” he grunted out unprepared.

“I read that where the Jewish population in Germany in 1933 was about 505,000 or .75% of the entire population of 67 million.”

“Okay,” he said nodding in understanding.

“Well, how superior or a race could the Germans have been if a group which was less than 1% of the population totally stand in their way?”

“That’s a good point.”

“But why the Jews, why were the African Americans Attacked so? Was it because they were easy targets?”

“I don’t know for sure. I do know that economics is incredibly abstract and is beyond most people’s comprehension. Some white Americans in the South obviously saw African Americans as a threat to them. Why? It could be a myriad of reasons of which one I am sure is competition. To those who owned the factors of productions African Americans may have been attractive because of the lack of labor laws and regulations in the 1950’s they may have been a cheaper labor force which threatened the White Americans seeking employment. Racism keeps doors closed to the competition but opens it for you.

“It’s like we are two cats with our tails tied together and thrown over a clothesline. We rip into each other thinking we have a hold of whatever is causing our fear and pain. We never realize that it is someone else which in this case would be the system pitting us against one another. As laborers the African Americans and the White Laborers in the South were actually closer to one another than the people pulling their strings.”

He thought about what she had just said and then agreed, “That is a very apt analogy. When you think about it the Germans were scared; the Holocaust was born out of fear as was the racism of the south and many other places. We are afraid. Things are tough. We seem to be doing everything right but we can’t seem to make it or we are barely clinging on to what we do have. What is actually happening is incredibly confusing and hard to understand. Things are happening which seem to be beyond our control; beyond our understanding. All we do know is it can’t possibly be the people who own the jobs. It must be these people who are different.”

“I read that one of the reasons Jews have been associated with greed and money is that during the Middle Ages money was considered by Christians to be materialistic and evil.”

Jack quickly inserted, “And it made it easy to tax them. They had no problems parting with something so evil.”

“Jews saw money as nothing but a tool for people to use and through their use of it with no religious emphasis on it became very efficient,” Jill continued not phased by Jack’s comment, “Medieval Lords would hire them to manage their finances and properties as well as to establish trade with the Muslim world. Sad thing is that these Jewish business agents would gain wealth through their fiscal management and business dealings. European Lords would occasionally find themselves in financial dire straits. They would blame the Jews and create pogroms against them to rob them and seize their property for their own use. In fact when Columbus was getting financing for his exploration Isabel gave him money she had confiscated from Jews who were being deported from Spain along with Muslims. So many ships were being used to deport Jews and Muslims that it was an effort to find the ships which Columbus did use. He even mentions seeing boatloads of deportees as he left Spain.”

“I’ve heard that as well in a history course.”

“It’s such a lost.”

“It is,” agreed Jack, “You have basically a small handful of people in respects to the entire population controlling so much of what is going on in the economy which affects us all. It is like we are in one big game which they control by keeping us within the limits of the game and the rules to their favor. But when things go wrong we attack one another which benefits those running the game.”

“Probably the biggest reason Critical Race Theory is being attacked or people are being manipulated to attack something with which they aren’t even familiar is there is a danger that if people did learn all you can about CRT they would realize more of the big picture and be able to create real change.”

“Which would threaten those running the game as their culpability which would be more apparent to those who are being controlled,” added Jack, “We might even learn to reach out to one another, communicate, and learn to work through our differences together. We may realize we can create a new world without a few people controlling the lives of billions. We may be able to create a real world of potential for all.”

Jill smiled in agreement and said, “Yes, that would be nice.”