Emmett Till and Police Brutality

A time of fear is where growth takes place. Throughout the course of history, change is a prevalent theme that many people in the United States have had the opportunity to experience while living in such a privileged country. Many obstacles were faced head on by some of the bravest souls this generation has ever seen. Looking back on pivotal moments such as the Civil Rights Movement, some might say that was a major turning point in our society today. Major issues were fought, and countless individuals were slaughtered based upon something as simple as the amount of pigmentation in someone’s skin.

Racism has been around for generations upon end. Although one might take a step back and view how much has changed since the 1960’s, there is still a huge racial barrier between white and black civilians in the United States. Acts of violence and hate crimes are still being committed today. However, there is one murder case that was committed in the mid 1950’s that set a melancholy tone for the early months of the Civil Rights Movement and those who were participating in it. The murder of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till.

Emmett Till was from Chicago Illinois and lived with his mother Mamie Till. He attended a segregated elementary school, but it was nothing in comparison to segregation in the southern parts of the United States such as Alabama, Georgia, or Mississippi where Emmett was killed. About a year previously, Brown vs. Board of Education was a case in which the Supreme Court ruled to be in favor of desegregating schools. Since this was such a crucial event during this time it caused a lot of turmoil for white individuals who did not want the typical educational setting to be integrated.

The Supreme Court decision sparked the formation of a hate group known as the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK was mainly composed of middle-class white males who wanted to fight against desegregation across the United States. Mississippi was also one of the most supremacist and segregated states in the country during this time period. Numerous black individuals were killed by white men in Mississippi during the mid 1950’s. The typical reasons white men would give for killing blacks ranged from the act of stealing groceries and household items to talking back to just about any white person.

The reason why Emmett’s case is so different from other lynching’s during this time frame is because he died at only fourteen years old while visiting family in Money Mississippi. Since Emmett was from a part of the country where segregation was not as prominent as it was in the south, He did not consider what life was really like for both of the divided races in one of the most segregated states in America. Emmett’s family often said that he was a boy who loved to pull pranks and horseplay with friends. Little did Emmett’s family know that one of his pranks would be the cause of his downfall.

Emmett and his cousin Curtis Jones went to a gas station one day to meet up with other children to play around and have a spot to relax. While outside of the gas station, Emmett was showing off a picture of a white girl who Emmett claimed to be his girlfriend at the time. The other black children taunted Emmett to go inside and talk to a white woman who was working at the counter. Emmett who appears to always be up for a challenge made his way into the store and said “Bye, Baby.” He then ran out of the store and jumped into Curtis’ car and sped off as Carolyn Bryant came running out of the gas station appalled at what had just happened to herself. Word traveled around fast about what had happened to Carolyn and soon many people knew what had happened.

A few days had passed by and the boys attempted to forget about the encounter until one late night a truck pulled up into the driveway of Curtis Jones’ house. The men who had gotten out of the truck were Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, and his brother in law J.W Milam. Without hesitating, the men stormed into the house and kidnapped Emmett. Bryant and Milam drove to the Tallahatchie River where they made Emmett carry a 70-pound cotton gin down to the riverside. After forcing him to strip from his clothing, Milam pulled out a gun and shot Till right between his eyes.

Emmett’s body was discovered around three days later. There was barbed wire holding the cotton gin fan around his neck, it was caught on a river tree root growing from the side of the riverbank. One of Emmett’s eyes were gouged out of his head and his skull had been completely crushed on one side from blunt force trauma. The brutality of the murder was so gruesome it made civilians begin to question why Milam and Bryant would do such a thing to someone who was still considered to be a child. Before Emmett’s body was discovered, the two men were charged with kidnapping. After Till’s body was found, Milam and Bryant were now being charged with Emmett’s murder. His body was so brutally mutilated that the only way Mose Wright, Emmett’s uncle, could identify him was by a ring on the boy’s finger. Since Emmett’s body was quickly decomposing, the coroner wanted to bury the body in Mississippi, but Emmett’s mother refused upon learning about her boy’s tragic death. She demanded that his body be sent back to Chicago for an open casket funeral. “Let the world see what they did to my boy.” Mamie Till stated. (Eyes on the Prize)

Thousands of people lined the streets on the day of Emmett’s funeral. His mutilated body was plastered on just about every black newspaper in the country symbolizing the racial barrier that still stands between blacks and whites of todays society. It fueled a fire inside of black America that not many people could grasp. Roy Wilkins was the executive secretary of the NAACP in New York gave an official statement regarding the slaying of Emmett Till. Wilkins stated, “It would appear from this lynching that the state of Mississippi has decided to maintain white supremacy by murdering children.” (Christopher Metress) He felt as if the killers of Emmett had no restraining influence by the state, newspapers, or decency for being the better race. People were beginning to donate money towards the NAACP’S Fight Fund which helped victims and families of racial attacks. Donations were at an all-time high. The discovery of Till’s body became a national headline that rather quickly became a fighting stance against the North and South. Due to the case becoming a national controversy, Mississippian whites became overly angry at the NAACP for labeling Emmett’s case as a lynching.

A few weeks after the body of Emmett was buried in his hometown, Bryant and Milam were trialed in a segregated courthouse in the town of Sumner Mississippi. Besides Mose Wright who was Emmett’s cousin, there were a couple of other witnesses who identified the defendants as the murderers. On September 23rd, the all-white jury reflected on the case for a little less than an hour before coming forward and stating that they found Bryant and Milam to not be guilty. The jury’s reasoning for decision believed that the state had done a poor job in identification of the body. This decision caused many people around the country to become outraged at the jury’s verdict because of the all-white jury and the state’s decision to not prosecute Bryant or Milam for kidnapping.

As the years continued to pass racially motivated crimes have somewhat yielded but they are no stranger to society when they appear on the media. For there is still a barrier between whites and blacks that stands. We as a present-day society have been physically integrated when it comes to education, restaurants, bathrooms and other facilities, but have we been mentally integrated? Why is there still so much hatred between people with different colors of skin? More recent cases such as Trayvon Martin remind us everyday that the racial era most individuals dreamed of being over is unquestionably not.

On the night of February 26th 2012, Trayvon Martin an African American high school student was fatally shot by police officer George Zimmerman while he was visiting relatives in Sandford Florida. The place of the shooting took place in a gated community where Zimmerman was on watch duty. He called the Sanford Police non-emergency number to report a suspicious person in the gated community. Trayvon was reportedly walking around the neighborhood wearing a dark grey hoodie and holding an unknown object.

While Zimmerman was talking to the dispatcher on the phone he identified that Martin was a black male. The dispatcher on the phone reported to Zimmerman and specifically said “Are you following him?” when Zimmerman responded “Yes” the dispatcher came back and said, “Ok we don’t need you to do that.” (Archive.org) However George continued to follow Trayvon when specifically told not to. Trayvon became aware that Zimmerman was watching him and ran off. That’s when Zimmerman told the dispatcher “Okay. These assholes they always get away.” (Archive.org)

After Zimmerman ended the call with the police department, a violent fluke took place between Trayvon and himself which ultimately ended in Zimmerman fatally shooting the seventeen-year-old by the doors of the townhouse in which Martin was staying with his family.

By the time officials had arrived on the scene, Trayvon had died due to the gunshot wound in his chest. As the news of this case spread around the United States, many believed that the cause of Trayvon’s death was not related to the fact that he was a suspicious figure, but a deeper seeded issue such as race. A topic that has often been pushed underneath the rug. The initial police report stated that George Zimmerman was white but as media reports and official statements were released it was later revealed that he was from a Spanish background. This raised controversy because this act of crime was committed by a minority so could this murder be related to racial issues if both of the individuals involved are minorities?

As this case developed, Zimmerman’s family members spoke out against the racial allegations as did politicians accusing the media of misrepresenting Zimmerman’s race to fit a political story of a racially motivated murderer. Thousands of protestors across the country supported the arrest and investigation against Zimmerman. Originally, he was charged with the second-degree murderer of Trayvon Martin but on July 13th 2013 the jury found Zimmerman not guilty. President Barack Obama gave an impromptu speech six days after the verdict of the trial stating that black men in the United States himself included commonly suffer from racial profiling.

To this day, many people would consider the murder of Trayvon Martin to be the Emmett Till of our time. That comparison holds the value of truth in that their tragic deaths were a result of similar yet different burdens of racial tension in America. Emmett’s death was the result of white racial supremacy that originated from slavery and the Jim Crow laws specifically talking about those in the deep south. His death set the example that racism pivots on the idea that blacks are the inferior race and they deserve the suppression and poverty that comes with being a black in the United States. The racial predisposition that led to Trayvon Martin’s death is slightly different than Till’s as it still was a form of slavery and segregation informed by old concepts of racial order.

In more simple terms, it was that blacks have their “place” in society. Martin’s murder case reflected the urban location of today’s racial inequality otherwise known as the ghetto. The segregation of the black community however has made ongoing process of producing the largest black middle class in history. This reflects the ongoing progression that America has made since the 1960’s. The civil rights movement molded and shaped the way for blacks and other minorities to access professional settings that would have been unimaginable during the time Emmett Till was still alive.

The sort of racism that led to Emmett’s death does still exist today, however Americans have developed a much rougher attitude towards the subject of race. Typically, the attitudes that we are used to reading in history books about hateful or violent acts are not as prominent, however it resides in the mindsets of citizens by creating stereotypes that all African Americans start from the ghetto and are therefore branded by their past associations with danger, crime, and poverty. In today’s society a black person is permanently burdened with a negative presumption that he or she must prove before being able to create mutual relationships with others. Back in the 1950’s a black person’s “place” might have been in the field picking cotton or sitting on the back of the bus. If a black person is found out of their place they could simply be put into jail, be punished, or even lynched. In present day a black person’s “place” is considered to be the ghetto. If blacks are found to be “out of their place” like in a fancy hotel, restaurant, or upscale residence spaces, they might be treated with suspicion, avoided, arrested, or in more extreme cases killed. Trayvon’s death is an example of a more current racial stereotype and how it works.

It is safe to say that Trayvon’s killer, George Zimmerman saw Martin as a young black man wearing a hoodie and assumed he was from the ghetto and therefore fit him into the category that Trayvon was out of his place for being in a middle class gated community. Although Zimmerman had a racial background of Spanish and Latino decent, he did not have a history of racism. The situation being that Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon because he was black is very unlikely, but there are proven facts that Zimmerman put a gun in his pocket and followed Trayvon after assuming that his black skin and choice of clothes meant he was from the ghetto and was causing mischief.

George Zimmerman’s motives for killing Trayvon were related to assumptions about black men but it was never made apparent that he acted out of hatred of the black’s race as a whole. That does not make the outcome of this case excusable for the actions of Zimmerman, but Till’s murders acted out of pure racial hatred. The outcomes of both of these mirrored cases is a beacon of hope for our history and rapid racial progression as a society. Major racial changes have been made for the better since Till’s childhood.

Did you like this example?

969

40