Long-awaited, the backstory regarding the killing of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till is being told nearly 70 years after his death. The movie, Till, recounts the kidnapping and killing of the black boy who, while visiting his cousins in the deep South during Summer 1955, was brutally murdered by racists, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, for allegedly violating Mississippi’s racist social codes by flirting with a white woman.
The profoundly-emotional movie provides the backstory of the savage beating and subsequent outrage related to Emmett’s murder and the hour of deliberation by an all-white male jury acquitting Bryant and Milam of all charges.
To blacks of my generation, Emmett’s story symbolized the racial violence against southern blacks, a cautioning essential to survival. For years, the September 15, 1955, issue of Jet Magazine, showing Emmett’s unbelievably-mutilated body, was displayed in barbershops, beauty parlors, and homes, throughout the black community.
I’ll leave film reviewing to the experts, limiting my critique to the skillful telling of the teenager’s abduction and murder accomplished without showing the vicious bludgeoning that so grossly disfigured the Chicago South Sider that he was unrecognizable. Instead, the film’s focus on the brave, unorthodox, and spontaneous action taken by Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, shocking the Nation in the mid-1950s and again, almost 70 years later, stands out as a watershed moment in the struggle for civil and human rights.
It took enormous hatred and rage to inflict the sadistic beating on a child for a purported insult to the southern racial order. But Emmett’s mother’s intuitive decision to ensure that her son did not die an inconspicuous death became the pinnacle of the modern civil-rights era, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..
Mobley’s decision to reveal the grotesque images of her son’s severely-beaten body angered and galvanized blacks throughout the country. In addition, Emmett’s death became a rallying cry for Rosa Parks and others to fortify their stance against racial injustice, infusing the movement with the much-needed element of defiance necessary to propel civil rights gains.
I was a year old when two racist white men took Emmett from his uncle’s home in Money, Miss., but I have heard about the atrocity my entire life. Emmett’s halting story speaks to the present-day debate about the growth of white nationalism, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and public talk of another civil war. The movie clarifies that the bigotry and racial injustice responsible for Emmett’s murder, if not for his mother’s relentless determination, wouldn’t have been told.
Black people familiar with Emmett’s death may find solace in knowing that the story is finally being told. Because of the movie, those who will learn about the incident, join in mourning the untold numbers of men, women, and children, lynched by their fellow Americans.
It’s difficult to fathom that it took another 67 years after Emmett’s murder for the 117th U.S. Congress to pass House Bill 55, The Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, sponsored by Illinois congressman Bobby Rush, to become public law.
As for race relations, this impassioned reflection speaks candidly, as only Malcolm X can, about what looms for the Nation. “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those that do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the systems of exploitation.”
Anthony Stanford is an opinion columnist, urban theorist, and author of the book, “Homophobia in the Black Church: How Faith, Politics and Politics and Fear Divide the Black Community.”