Why We Kneel: Emmett Till, 1955 and 2018

Most of you know the story of Emmett Till, but bear with me …

Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago, but in the summer of 1955, when he was just fourteen, Emmett went to visit relatives in Mississippi. One day he went into to town, to a grocery store, and spoke to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the white owner of the store. There has been some dispute over what occurred inside the store; some say Till was flirting with Bryant, and perhaps even whistled at Bryant.

But we do know that Carolyn Bryant told her husband, and a jury, Emmett Till made physical and verbal advances toward her, though, decades later Carolyn Bryant admitted she’d lied about a great deal of what had happened, especially when she’d said Emmett Till grabbed her waist and uttered obscenities.

But by then it was far too late.

Several nights after the store incident, after Carolyn Bryant lied to her husband Roy about Till, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam went armed to Till's great-uncle's house and took Emmett Till by force.

They took him away and beat him and mutilated him before shooting him in the head and tying a heavy cotton gin fan around his neck, sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River.

Three days later, Till's body was discovered.

His body was returned to Chicago where his mother insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, so the world could see her son’s bloated, mutilated body. That image, and I will not show it here because it’s far too gruesome, sparked the Civil Rights movement.

A few months later, in September 1955, after a nineteen-day trial and an hour of jury deliberations, Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were acquitted by an all-white jury of Till's kidnapping and murder. And then, in 1956, in an interview with Look magazine, and protected against double jeopardy, both men publicly admitted that they had murdered Emmett Till.

After Milam and Bryant were acquitted, they initially remained in Mississippi, but were boycotted, threatened, attacked, and humiliated by locals. Milam died in 1980 at the age of 61, and Bryant died in 1994 at the age of 63. Bryant expressed no remorse for his crime and in fact said:

"Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he just can't stay dead."

Here’s why … In 2007, fifty-two years after Emmett Till was murdered, historical markers to be erected at locations related to his death—at the river where his body was found and at the spot where Bryant’s store once stood.

But the sign at the river has been replaced three times; the first was stolen in 2007, the second was destroyed by gunfire in 2016; the third sign also has a bullet hole in it.

That’s why people kneel during the anthem; sixty-three years after Emmett Till was murdered because a white woman lied to a jury, his life, his death, are being assaulted.

This is not just an old story, stick around ….

Washington Post