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Books on
Emmett Till Murder
Death of Innocence /
A Death in the Delta /
The Lynching of Emmett Till /
Getting Away with Murder
Film
on Emmett Till Murder
The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till /
The Murder of Emmett Till
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The
Confessions of the Murderers of Emmett Till
By Amin
Sharif
I read the "Confessions"
of the killers of Till. It is a chilling account of how
peckerwoods in the South think and act. There is one
puzzling aspect of the "
Confessions" that I can't fathom. Why would any
young person raised in the south urge a (relative?)
young boy on to certain danger by daring him to try and
court a white woman. This doesn't ring true.
Bobo's mother tried
to instill in him how dangerous the South was. It is
quite possible that Bo would test the dangerous waters
of the Southland being from up North. But would a group
of young blacks, primarily black boys, raised under the
pall of white hot racism do such a thing? Remember,
these kids did not think of racism as some kind of
imaginary bogey man. They had seen the fear in the eyes
of their own fathers and grandfathers. Robert Johnson,
the blues singer, called white racism a hell hound bent
on tearing a black man to pieces. They-themselves-knew
what segregation meant.
There are several
other aspects of the "
Confessions" that I also find troubling. The idea
that Till was not afraid contradicts the earlier
statement that he "wanted to go home." The whole idea
that they were out to frighten Bo doesn't make sense.
When they entered his room in darkness, Bo had to be
frightened. He would have undoubtedly known that
something was up when his killers did not "whip" him on
the spot. He had most likely been infected by the fear
of those around him.
And why was Bo
still there anyway? The "
Confessions" says that Bo had been convinced by his
grandmother to stay--that the threat was overblown. But
who is more fearful of a white lynch mob. . . a black
woman or a black man? I believe it is the black woman.
She find herself deprived of the limited protection that
the black man offers if he is lynched. He is the buffer
between herself and white hot racism. It is the black
woman who feeds fear to black children with her breast
milk. It is she who always cautions the black man
against acting against the white man. Of course, she has
cause!
It is the black
woman who must bury the black man when his courage leads
him to confront the white man. She lives stigmatized by
the black man's action, her children, especially the
males are also stigmatized as sons of a "no good"
nigger. She lives everyday thinking that the "sins of
the father" will be visited upon the sons. After all,
the memory of the slave master is long. Just a few
thoughts. sharif
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* * *
A
Response to Sharif on the Look Confession
Brother Sharif, peace and
blessings,
I quite agree with
your perspective on the Look exposition of the "
Confessions of the Murderers of Emmett Till." What
troubles me is not the twists and the lies of Roy Bryant
and J.W. Milam and the apology for the murder of Emmett
Till, but rather Look's editorial justification for its
payment of $4,000 to these two low-life murderers. They
begin their re-creation of the murderer's perspective by
claiming that they are presenting the "real story" --
the "true account" -- of the killing of Emmett Till. But
they do not know the truth; they know only the "truth"
of the murderers in that Look and its editors were not
eye-witnesses to the events that they assist the
murderers to construct.
They become
participants in the reconstruction of the murderers'
lies and justifications. Thus it is clear to me that the
Look story is another form of white persecution of the
fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, that these Look editors
by a literary means continue to persecute and justify
their persecution of this fourteen-year old boy, and
worse, in the most shameless manner. If they wanted to
present the story of the murderers in an objective
manner they could have done so plainly and in a more
efficient manner by a simple question-and-answer
process, rather than by this dressed-up literary essay.
All we need do is
to look at the face of the murdered Emmett Till to
demonstrate that all of things that these murderers
claim Emmett did before they put a bullet in his head is
an outrageous lie. But surely if we look at the "Letters
to the Editor" that this literary essay had its desired
effect -- that is, to put a bit of salve on white
America's racial guilt.
But let us present
these "
Confessions" to others and see what is their
reaction and what they think about the culpability of
Look magazine.
As ever and always, Rudy
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* * *
The story begins when handsome, 14-year-old, Emmett Till
of Chicago (born July 25, 1941), who when younger had
been a victim of polio, but who now as a strapping lad
whose only souvenir of his bout with polio was the
sometimes habit of stuttering, was granted permission to
visit his uncle Mose Wright, 64-year-old cotton farmer
in the small (350 population) magnolia state cotton
center of money Mississippi.
The visiting youth's vacation moved along nicely until
August 28, 1955, the fifth day of his visit.
In the company of several other youths, Emmett visited
Bryant's Grocery in Money and started a chain of events
that was later to focus the eyes of the nation and the
world upon Mississippi.
Following the discovery of the body the scene shifted to
Chicago, Illinois, where for three days some 50,000
persons viewed the youth's mutilated body. At the
funeral services the youth's mother, Mrs. Mamie Bradley
cried, "I hope my son didn't die in vain."
See also:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1969702
and
http://www.musarium.com/ws.html
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* *
Bill Moyers Interviews Douglass A. Blackmon
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/06202008/watch2.html
Douglas A. Blackmon,
Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black
Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008)
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update 2 July 2008 |
