Black History Month Feature:Emmett Till

Brother Deacon, I obtained a copy of the Jet magazine (which I got from my grandmother) documenting Emmitt Till's funeral. I used it for a Black History project in college once, and in the magazine his mother shared that Emmitt suffered from a stuttering problem as a child. In an attempt to cure his condition, she would order her son to whistle when he felt himself stuttering. So one day Emmitt went to Money, Mississippi and was trying to tell the lady what we wanted from the grocery store he whistled and she assumed he was flirting with her. So she got mad about that and called her family members and that's how they ended up beating and murdering him.

Another little known fact is Emmitt had a ring that his mother had given to him as a birthday gift, and on the day he left Chicago to visit Mississippi, his mother tried to talk him into leave the ring at home, but Emmitt begged his mother to let him wear the ring because he wanted to show the ring to his friends in Mississippi. It turns out that when Emmitt's body was found, his body was so badly decomposed until that same ring that his mother did not want him to wear to Mississippi, was the same ring that they used to identify him.

I never will forget how hurt my father was when he heard the word of the death of Emmett Till because he knew his family well. Emmett Till was just 14 years old and in today’s terms he would be considered a nerd, smart as a whip and doing well in school. He was send down south for the summer because of the Chicago gangs was ruff on him to join., so his mother sent him to her sisters in Money Mississippi to keep him out of trouble.

That Date Aug 28, 1955 was a day I first saw my father cry for anything because it was like he lost one of his own. Throughout the many years after Emmett Till’s death, I have been following the black progressive movement here in Chicago, like when Dr. Martin Luther King came hear to help out with breaking down the walls of segregation here under Richard Daly “THE BOSS” of Chicago. Now that is a story for another time.

That picture of him in his casket broke my heart that first time I saw it. He literally looked like something from a horror movie and how someone could do something like that to a child, let alone another human being is beyond me. Although I am sad about the way Emmett Till died, his death served a purpose and ignited the Civil Rights Movement. I think the movement would have started eventually, but this incident was the straw that broke the camel's back.

I applaud Sister Mamie for staying strong. She refused to close the casket, she wanted everybody to see what the animals did to her child knowing that if it happened to him, it could happen to other members of the black family across the world.

I agree with you Sister Muhammad. It is all apart of The Most High's plan for his people as more of us awaken to our history as we become a where of who we are. We must continue to make our people attentive to the FACT that many of us are still in the dark and some of us are comfortable about where they are.

I encourage you to continue to TEACH the good news and maybe a word or a sentence or even a paragraph might make a break through because it happen to me and I know it has happened to others..

Continue to TEACH Sister Muhammad, TEACH.

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...Yes,Sister Mamie is very strong! She had to be. I don't think I could have been as strong as she if this happened to my child. I continue to feel the pain of what has happened to this child! ...Nearly the same as when they electrocuted the other poor Black child down south!

Brother Ron, I feel your and your family's pain...it's a pain that will never cease.

WE SHALL CONTINUE TO BE A STRONG AND UNITED PEOPLE...GOD WILL SEE TO THAT!

Thank you both for sharing this part of a never-ending story.

“Emmett Till, an African American teen from Chicago, is visiting relatives in Mississippi when he makes a fatal mistake – he whistles at a white woman, breaking the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South. Three days later, two white men drag him from bed and brutally murder him. Despite national outrage and the testimony of eyewitnesses including Emmett’s uncle Moses Wright, Mississippi finds the accused not guilty. Safe from being tried twice for the same crime, the men later admit their guilt and describe details of the lynching."
http://blackhistory.com/content/288593/a-t...

In Peace and Love,

~ "SANKOFA the MAAFA" ~


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