The painful and necessary growth Emmett Till gave us
Afewdays fromnow, on July 25, Emmett Till might have celebrated his 77th birthday. Imagine him. Mr. Till. Not the14-year-old boy in the open casket, with his mutilated face and his motherweeping by his side, but themanthat boy never got to be.
By now, Mr. Till might be a retired teacher or postal carrier or lawyer. Maybe he’d still be living in his childhood home, a red-brick two-flat on Chicago’s South Side. Maybe hewould have raised a family there.
He might have a bad knee, a touch of arthritis, flecks of gray in his hair, wrinkles around his bright eyes, the ordinary evidence of an ordinary long life.
His grandchildren might come by for his birthday party and tease him for stillwearing that old-fashioned tie.
“Mr. Till,” a neighbor kid might ask, “what was it like when youwere little?”
More likely, no kidwould ask that, assuming instead, as kids do, that theworld they knowis theworld as it has always been.
But theworldtoday isn’twhat itwas when Tillwas born in1941, and it’s a doubleedged truth that theworldmay not have advanced as much as it has without his monstrous death.
Afewdays ago, theU.S. Department of Justice announced itwas reopening the investigation into Till’s lynching, a story that has become part of the American historical bedrock:
August, 1955. Emmett Till, age14, leaves home in Chicago to visit relatives in Mississippi. In a grocery there, he does something that offends a whitewoman. Ormaybe he doesn’t. Maybe he whistles, grabs her. Or doesn’t.
Whatever happened in that store, or didn’t, hewas later beaten and shot, tied to a metal fan and dumped in theTallahatchie River.
Back in Chicago, Till’s mother opened his casket to the public.
Converting her grief to courage, allowing theworld to see what racial violence looked like, Mamie Till-Mobley helped ignite the civil rightsmovement.
For five days in a Chicago church, thousands of people streamed past. JetMagazine and The Chicago Defender published photos of Emmett’s corpse, his body in a dark suit and white shirt, his face grotesque.
Eventually, two white men, both dead now, went on trial for the murder. They were acquitted by an all-male, all-white jury. They later admitted they’d done it, but they were never punished, and the case has long felt unresolved.
Not everyonewants the case reopened. There are thosewhosay it’s a cynicalmove, pointless, a political ploy by the current administration, a retreat to the past whenwe should be focusing on the present.
Butwe need to keep in mind:1955wasn’t that long ago.
Millions of Americans alive todaywere alive then. That time lives with us, in us. What happened toEmmett Till remains intimately connected to today.
It’s true that times have changed. Our era is better inmanyways thanks to changes sparked by the fury over Till’s death.
Part of the tragedy of his story is that he didn’t live to see howhe helped change the world.
Civil rights. Voting rights. African-Americans in high positions in almost every field. The growing power ofAfrican-American culture in the wider culture. Ablack president.
Thosewere just dreams when hewas young.
He would never get to see the new Alabama museum dedicated to revealing the atrocities of lynching, or the new civil rights museumin Mississippi. Hewould never go to the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian. They might not exist without him.
He also didn’t live to see the problems that persist: the assault on civil rights and voting rights, the problems of police brutality, the poverty that keeps somany black Americans out of power.
And he didn’t live long enough to see his mother’s long, strong life. Hewould never knowthat nearly half a century after his death, shewas laid to rest under a headstone that says,“Her pain united a nation.”
Emmett Till’s lifewas short. His death was awful. But what he represents lives on, and so do the important issues he makes us think about.
I like imagining oldMr. Till sitting on his front porchwatching the kids play, eating a piece of his 77th birthday cake. He didn’t get that future. Instead, his death continues to help us create a better one.