Let Us Remember
By Jade Henry
FWIS Youth Writer
In August, 70 years ago Emmett Till was brutally murdered in Money, Mississippi. This racial injustice sparked outrage among Black Americans and thus the Civil Rights Movement was birthed.
Emmett Till was born to Mamie Till-Mobley and Louis Till in Chicago, Illinois on July 25, 1941. In the summer of 1955, Emmett Till, then a 14-year-old, went on vacation to visit family in Money, Mississippi. He was shopping at a grocery store owned by a white couple, Roy and Carolyn Bryant. While he was shopping, someone claimed he whistled at Mrs. Bryant. Emmett Till was ONLY a child. He was brutally murdered in Mississippi the same day, August 28th, 1955, for supposedly whistling at Mrs. Bryant.
The grocery store owner, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, decided to take matters into their own hands that day on August 28th. Both men went to Emmett Till's great-uncle's house and kidnapped Emmett Till. The brothers battered and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and submerging his body in the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. Emmett Till's assailants weighed him down with a 75-pound cotton-gin fan, which they tied to his body with barbed wire that forced him to drown to the bottom of the river. Emmett Till's bloated body was recovered from the river three days later and was placed in a casket that his mother insisted remain open so that everyone could see the damage that was done to his entire body. After this incident, people from all around the world were informed about how Emmett Till passed because of his open casket burial. “Let the people see what they did to my boy” Emmett Till’s mother, (Mamie Till Mobley).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. mentioned Emmett Till's name and the injustice of his murder in his interviews, talks, and sermons, emphasizing the cruelty of racism and white supremacy. “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” quoted from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 's letter from the Birmingham jail on April 16, 1963.
This August, only 70 years ago, Lest we forget, and may we always remember, EMMETT TILL.