Under the baobab: Why Emmett Till’s story must continue to be told

These days, we are being haunted by two ghosts of Mississippi, one alive and one dead. Both are very much at the root of our present-day reality regarding the pathology of white supremacy.

Last week, a grand jury in Mississippi declined to indict 87-year-old Carolyn Bryant Donham pursuant to an arrest warrant that had been issued in the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till. The second ghost was Emmett himself. His story is being retold in a new film, “Till” premiering this fall. “Till” was produced by and features our friend and colleague Whoopi Goldberg, host of “The View” on ABC.

We all know the story. In 1955, Emmett, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi. While buying candy at a local store, the owner, a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused him of whistling at her. Several nights later, Roy Bryant, her husband, and Roy’s half-brother J.W. Milam, along with several other people, kidnapped Emmett from his uncle’s house. Carolyn Bryant identified him as the boy who had whistled at her. Roy and J.W. tortured and lynched Emmett, dumping his body in the Tallahatchie River. Both men were acquitted by an all-white, all male jury despite eyewitnesses to the crime. The jury deliberated for 67 minutes. Later Roy and J.W. wrote an article for “Look” magazine describing their crime in detail.

Emmett’s body was returned to Chicago where his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket She wanted to show the world “what they did to my son.” Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his open casket. Images of his mutilated body were published in Black-oriented magazines and newspapers. My mother and I went to the viewing. The horror I saw in that casket has haunted my nightmares for almost 70 years.

I knew Emmett. We hung out in the same public swimming pool in Washington Park. Like me he had a minor bout with polio, which left him with a slight stutter. Both of us had relatives in Mississippi that we visited in the summer, at least, until his lynching.

The brutality of his murder transformed the civil rights movement. Rosa Parks said he was in her mind in 1955 when she refused to give up her seat and sparked the Montgomery bus boycott. Eight years later, in 1963, the leader of that boycott, Martin Luther King Jr., told a quarter of a million people about his dream in front of the Lincoln Memorial. Muhammed Ali said Emmett was in his mind when he committed acts of teenage rebellion in Louisville. Emmett was part of my motivation when I returned to my ancestral home to register voters during Mississippi Freedom Summer in 1964. That summer at least three civil rights workers were lynched.

Since 1955 countless Black boys have been violently killed by white racists, by police, by each other.

We pray, we march, we protest, we vote to try and make it stop. We preach that “Black lives do matter.” We embrace our children and try to shield them from the inhumanity of white racism and the indifference of a distracted community. This fall I will be sitting with Whoopi, and at least two ghosts, when the film “Till” opens. This time as the story is told, we hope enough people will listen so we can stop the horror.

Ag Progress Days returns

This past week, Penn State resumed Ag Progress Days, Pennsylvania’s largest outdoor agricultural exposition. There were over 400 exhibitors from the United States and Canada and thousands of adults and children. There was something for everyone to enjoy. Parking and admission were free. The exposition hosted by Penn State’s College of Agricultural Sciences showcased educational programs, current research, and the latest innovations in agricultural equipment and technology.