This Week's Opening Thought: July 25, 2022
TW: Discussion of hate crimes, anti-Blackness, murder, lynching.
This week’s opening thought: Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.
Emmett Till should’ve been celebrating his 81st birthday today with friends and family.
But he’s not.
Instead, we’re five weeks away from the sad, traumatic 67th anniversary of his torturing and lynching at the hands of white supremacists at the behest of a white “damsel in distress.”
But, you know, according to many white people, “these things happened so long ago,” and “we [Black people] need to get over it.”
My mother is 67 years old. Does that sound like “a long time ago” to you?
Emmett Till should be having a birthday breakfast right now, possibly with his grandchildren. Maybe some pancakes with a side of hand-drawn birthday cards.
But he’s not.
In September 1955, a few months after his murder, an all-white jury found Emmett Till’s murderers not guilty. Protected against double jeopardy, the two men publicly admitted in a 1956 interview with Look magazine that they had tortured and murdered Emmett Till, selling the story of how they did it for $4,000. That was 66 years ago.
But, you know, Black folx need to “get over it.”
Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who was the spark for the lynching and murder of Emmett Till, evidently wrote a memoir that was never published. In this memoir, Carolyn claims that SHE was a victim in all of this. She claims she pleaded with her husband and his brother, Emmett’s murderers, not to hurt Till. This is the same white woman whose accusation that Emmett Till made improper advances toward her prompted his subsequent kidnapping and murder. For decades, Carolyn declined to retract her disputed account of the events leading to Till’s murder until recently.
Carolyn has lived a long life with family and grandchildren, joy and happiness.
Carolyn is 87 years old.
Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.
But, you know, Black folx need to “get over it.”
Emmett Till was lynched and murdered on August 28, 1955. We’re coming up on the 67th anniversary of his murder.
My mother is 67 years old.
Emmett was a baby when he was murdered, a 14-year-old whose whole life should’ve been ahead of him. But he’s not here today because whiteness is a persistent and present danger to Black bodies. We, as a community, as a people, never get to fully mourn our lost loves and heal our souls because we’re still being lynched and murdered 67 years after Emmett.
Emmett Till would’ve been 81 years old today.
Emmett Till should’ve been celebrating his 81st birthday today with friends and family.
But he’s not.