University of Mississippi students hold a bullet ridden Emmett Till historical marker before carrying it to a Confederate monument on campus.
The horrific and unthinkably brutal lynching of Emmett Till, a 14-year old Chicago boy visiting rural Mississippi on August 28, 1955 for allegedly whistling at a White woman still challenges America’s racist character. This year on the anniversary the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture announced that it was putting on display a bullet riddled historical marker from the site where Till’s mutilated body was thrown into a river weighted down with a 70 pound cotton gin fan blade. It was the third of four markers vandalized, shot up by self-proclaimed Ku Klux Klansmen who posed for social media photos with their handiwork. It was replaced a fourth time by a bullet proof marker which was also vandalized but not destroyed.
Before arriving at
the Museum, the marker played a key roll in the bitter and divisive movement to remove Confederate
monuments from public places.
In 1919 students at the University of Mississippi carried Till’s
marker through campus after a panel discussion hosted by the Emmett
Till Memorial Commission to Memorial for the Confederate War Dead
which had been the target of on-going protests demanding its removal—part
of a wave of such protests sparked by Black Lives Matter Movement. That movement owed its inspiration in
no small part to Emmett’s mother Mamie who insisted that his
horribly disfigured body be displayed in an open casket at his funeral
to show “what they did to my boy.”
In 1955 Till’s
martyrdom helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. Although I don’t recall his name being mentioned
at Dr. Martin Luther King’s milestone March on Washington for Jobs and
Justice exactly eight years later in 1963 that event, broadcast live
on national television was a testament on how far the movement had come
in just a few years.
But it also
inspired the Klan, White Citizen’s Councils, and other night-riding
terrorists. The failure of local
courts to convict the known perpetrators of the outrage
convinced white supremacists that they were untouchable and had
the full support of the wider community.
That led to years of lynchings, assassinations, assaults, bombings,
and mob intimidation executed with impunity.
Eventually Federal
intervention and enforcement, no matter how reluctant, shifting
public opinion, and the simple weariness of many white Southerners
with the cycle of protests and violent reprisal that was hurting
the businesses. Slowly a much
ballyhooed “New South” emerged that grudgingly accepted integration
and Black voters with significant political power. Old Firebrands and Alabama Governor
George Wallace changed their tunes.
The Klan went back underground seldom to be mentioned
or acknowledged.
The overflowing
outrage at police executions of Black citizens and the street
confrontations of the Black Lives Matter Movement ripped the
band-aid off an old scab. The
Klan and other white nationalist who had never really gone away but who operated
on the fringes of society were empowered again by the Trump
Era and the dog-whistle of “Make America Great Again.” Attacks on Confederate monuments brought them
to center stage as defenders of tradition and heritage. Since Charlottesville violent
confrontations with anti-racists and anti-fascists have become
common. Scores of groups swelled
in membership. Demanding their “First
Amendment right to bear arms” often with the support and
complicity of right wing state and local governments, has turned
them out in great numbers in combat gear and armed with automatic
weapons. They even became emboldened
to attempt coup d’état last January at the Capitol. That comic opera putsch may
have been premature, but they are laying the groundwork for a second insurrection.
Emmett Till is
once again a convenient symbol and rallying cry for both sides of
the great divide. Not only was
the river site marker defaced, but another historical marker at the site of the
general store where Till allegedly insulted pure white Southern
womanhood. Has also been shot up on
multiple occasions. One of the markers
is now on exhibit at The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis.
No one is yet raising
monuments to Till’s murderers or to the current crop of terrorists, but
it may only be a matter of time.
Note—For a full review
of Emmett Till’s life and death, his mother’s crusade, and the search for justice visit my 2015
blog post The Legacy of Emmett Till 60 Years Later.
