Book of D: Crimes of Racist America

Till: Till is a 2022 biographical film about Mamie Till Mobley whose 14-year-old son Emmett Till was lynched in 1955. Till became an activist and fought for justice following her son's unmerited and abominable death. The movie is really good, and most of the time, it is jarringly painful and infuriating – as it well should be. Lest we forget.

The murder of Emmett Till continues to haunt the American imagination and tarnish the decadent southern reputation. Although Emmett was from Chicago, his visit to the Delta in August 1955 to visit relatives, will forever be nomenclature regarding the racist South. The younger Till was castigated for communicating with Carolyn Bryant in the store owned by Carolyn’s husband, Roy, in Money, Mississippi, where Emmett had entered to buy bubble gum. Apparently Till whistled at or spoke to Carolyn; no one knows for certain, but it was enough to infuriate Roy Bryant and his half-brother J. C. Milam to ruthlessly murder Emmett. It took three days to recover Emmett's body from the Tallahatchie River, where Bryant and Milam disposed of Till's body, by tying a seventy-five-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck to weigh it down – after they had already cracked open Emmett's skull and gouged his eye out. Mamie insisted on an open-casket funeral so that everyone could see what had been done to her Emmett. Jet magazine and other media sources published pictures of his mangled body, which horrified the world. Adding to the infamy of their crime, Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury in Sumner, Mississippi, on September 23, 1955, and a few months later sold the story of how they abducted, tortured, and killed Till to William Bradford Huie for a Look magazine interview. Although justice was never served in the case, Till’s brutal death and the subsequent sham trial were a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. 

I dare anyone to Google "Emmett Till death photos" and not become indignant over the injustice nor to be able to refrain from despondency or commiseration over the severity of his savage injuries.