Emmett Till
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Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad
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The lynching of Emmett Till is among the most infamous lynchings in the United States. Till was just a boy of 14 years when his life was tragically and violently cut short on August 28, 1955 after a white woman named Carolyn Bryant accused him of offending her in a store. The perpetrators of the murder were Bryant’s then-husband and brother-in-law. The white men beat and shot Till before callously leaving his body in a river. Both men were acquitted by an all-white trial.
In June 2022, a warrant never served for Carol Bryant’s arrest surfaced in a courtroom basement, where it sat for nearly 70 years. The warrant was for her involvement in Till’s kidnapping. Public outcry led to a lawsuit against the woman, the first official action after reopening the case. However, she died before facing any legal ramifications for her involvement.
The lynching of young Emmett Till has become a tragic lesson in American race relationships. Although lynchings in the 1950s were less common than they once were, they still existed. The boy’s age may have encouraged people to draw a line where they might have looked the other way, leading to Carol Bryant’s warrant. However, Till’s murder was one act in a long line of anti-Black violence, and the failure to serve Carol Bryant’s warrant reveals the power of white privilege.
Still, Emmett Till’s murder galvanized other people into action, including his other, Mamie Till-Mobley. As a mother to a Black child, Till-Mobley was acutely aware of adultification bias, which happens when people see Black children as older and more threatening than they are (it continues to play a role in anti-Black violence). This fear was portrayed in a 2022 biopic about Till. But Till-Mobley had already been an activist for years, and the handling of her son’s funeral and her many public appearances contributed to this lynching becoming a national subject.
Emmett Till’s face has become familiar to many Americans as it appears in museums and on statues and other memorials, thanks in part to his mother’s efforts. Both Mamie Till-Mobley and her son were awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in 2022. The same year, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act was signed into law by President Joe Biden. Nevertheless, some view this law as an empty gesture, rightfully arguing that hate crimes were already illegal and the racism that allowed them to persist will continue to do so.
The family of Emmett Till, who was brutally murdered at 14, demands an arrest after a decades-old warrant was found in a courthouse basement.
Read MoreMany have celebrated the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, signed into law on March 29, 2022. I see no reason to celebrate a law that is one hundred years late and is not an anti-lynching bill, despite the name.
Read MoreCongressman John Lewis, the civil rights leader who died on July 17, wrote this essay shortly before his death – to be published on the day of his funeral.
Read MoreOn a mission from God, in 2017 Johnathon Kelso, a Florida native decided to document lynching sites in six Southern states and to talk with the victims’ descendants.
Read MoreWhose justice is served by reopening the Emmett Till case?
Read MoreThis article is about the anti-lynching and racial injustice museums opening across the country, most notably The National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson, Mississippi.
Read MoreBy Elyse Wanshel, HuffPost Black Voices A civil rights landmark in Mississippi that commemorates the death of Emmett Till has been vandalized, The Associated Press reported Monday. The sign, which has been defaced before, was scraped so badly that information and photos about Till’s brutal death have been obliterated. Students from Cultural Leadership, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that teaches young adults how to become civil rights leaders, were present at the site after the sign was vandalized and were disheartened by the destruction. Dani Gottlieb, a 16-year-old from Cultural Leadership, told HuffPost that she was expecting to see “flowers growing in Emmett Till’s honor” at the landmark, “not a torn-down marker.” She and her peers decided as a group to take action. They covered the scraped-off information with hand-drawn pictures of Till, messages of hope and information about his killing. Read the article in its entirety here. Read in depth about the struggle for justice and equal rights here. Read more Breaking News here.
Read MoreWhen Johnson Publishing, a black-founded and owned company, announced a little more than two weeks ago that it had sold Ebony and Jet to a private equity firm in Texas, there was a sense of loss. Traditional media companies have struggled for years to adapt to a digital world, but the pressure on black-owned media has been even more acute.
Read MoreSix decades after the brutal slaying of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy, the small Mississippi Delta town where two white men were acquitted of his murder is dedicating a museum to the event credited with helping spark the U.S. civil rights movement.
Read MoreThe former talk show host and businesswoman compared the two Black teens who were killed after false accusations of crimes.
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