The Sweet Tune of Death.

I would like to make only 1 clarification before I start this 3 part comparative essay: this is not a senseless rampage. I am not writing this to make myself sound like a consprirasict, but only to bring up the fact that history is beginning to repeat itself in a new, more violent generation.

The two cases that I am bringing into question are from 1955 and from 2014. A blast from the past and a breath of the future, I call it. These 2 cases both include one severely angry white man who decides to take out his anger on a black boy. In one of these cases, a group of black boys were witnesses to the murder. I am talking about the case of Emmitt Till and the recent Florida murder of Jordan Davis, 17, who was shot in car due to “loud music”. While only 59 years apart, they both hold very similar details and scenarios that I feel have not been connected and over looked. A spark that could possible start another racial uprising should never be overlooked.

 Emmitt Till. Honestly, not a lot of people know this name. This is the name of a boy who went to Sumner, Mississippi on a vacation to visit his family. A boy who had grown up in downtown Chicago and knew nothing of the severity of hatred that had risen in the South. A boy who made just a simple mistake and was dragged out of his bed, kidnapped, beaten, lynched, shot in the head, had a cotton gin fan roped around his neck with barbed wire and thrown into the Tallahatchie River. And what exactly was his mistake you ask?  He whistled at a white woman. I pause here because I want you, the reader, to ask yourself a few questions: 1, Was it at all necessary? Was this boy’s life considered so insignificant that his torture had to end in such a violent death? 2, could this whole ordeal been prevented? I can answer that one: yes and no. The simplistic outlook would have been if he never left Chicago, he would still been alive and nothing of this tragedy would have been written in the books of history. But that’s just it. If it would have never happened, the spark that really started the civil rights movement would have never been set and who knows? We’d all be sitting still in segregated class rooms. I shudder at the thought. Have you thought about it? I hope you have. This is a thinking essay. I want to see your thinking caps on.

                Till went to Mississippi to visit his family. Being a “city boy”, he wanted to see how different the Delta was from Chicago. Mamie Till warned her son about the hate in south. She told her boy not to speak when he saw the white folk and when he saw a white woman to hold his head down and get off the street. She prayed he followed directions; the last thing she wanted was her son’s fun-loving nature to cause him trouble.

 

          The chain of events that lead to this horrible tragedy took place at the Bryant’s Grocery & Meat Market in the nearby town of Money. Till and five of his relatives went into the store to buy candy and some cold drinks. After his cousins had brought their goods, Till was left alone with Carol Bryant. Now this is where things get tricky for poor Emmitt. In Carol Bryant’s testimony she claimed that Till tried to make sexual advances towards her, supposedly going even as far as grabbing her waist and saying that he had been with white women before. But according to one of Till’s cousins, Till wasn’t in the store for more than a minute and saw nothing of this argument. He said that “Till brought his items and we all left together.”

 

          But all sides, in some type of agreement, said what happened next really doomed Emmitt. Till and his cousins were standing outside as Carol was leaving the store when Till “wolf-whistled at her”. Till’s relatives knew that he had broken the sacred rule. They dragged Till off and sped out of Money.

 

          Days would go by before repercussions would take place. Carol Bryant’s husband, Roy, returned home after a trip from Texas and was informed of the town buzz about what had happened to his wife. He couldn’t believe it; a Negro had the guts to step to his wife. Roy lost his mind; he believed Emmitt had to be taught a lesson.

 

          On Saturday August 27, Roy and his half-brother, John Milam, conjured up a plan to kidnap Emmitt. They drove to Moses Wright’s home in the middle of the night, where Till was sleeping. Bryant and Milam demanded to see “fat boy” and barged into the house looking for Till. When the duo found Emmett, they dragged him out of his bed and into their truck that was parked outside. From there on out, what exactly happened to Emmett Till is unknown other than the fact that he was severely beaten beyond the point of recognition.

 

And lynched.

 

And shot in the head.

 

And had a cotton gin fan wrapped around his neck with barbed wire.

 

And thrown into the Tallahatchie.

 

After three days, a boy named Robert Hodges was fishing in the river when he saw feet. He notified the police and they dragged the body of Emmitt Till out of the water. A silver ring was found on his body and was given to Wright who later gave the precious ring to Leflore County Deputy Sheriff John Cothran.

 

Mamie Till, who was notified about her son’s disappearance days earlier, received the news that no mother would ever want to hear: her baby boy had been found. Dead.

 

The reason why I had to explain all of this to you in the expanded version as I said before not a lot of people remember this tragedy. And I did say this was a three part essay,correct? Usually we switch up genres every week, but once I get the ball rolling, I won’t stop until gravity tells me to. In the next essay I will try = to make the Florida “loud music” case just as detailed as this one. So be patient; the news is still relatively fresh and acquiring the right info might take a pot of coffee, unlimited Wi-Fi, and a day or two. In the last essay, I will compare notes about the similarities in the two trials. Happy reading!

  Linder, Douglus O. "Emmett Till Murder Trial: Selected Testimony." Emmett Till Murder Trial: Selected Testimony. N.p., 2012. Web. 06 Apr. 2014. <http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/till/tillaccount.html>.