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I’m in the middle of booking guests for a daily radio show when I see a news flash on my phone. Carolyn Bryant Donham, the woman who accused Black teenager Emmett Till of making improper advances before he was lynched in Mississippi in 1955, died in hospice care in Louisiana.
I feel the staggering emotions that many in this country feel. Till’s mother’s courageous act of allowing his body to be placed in an open casket sparked the outrage that became the impetus of the Civil Rights Movement.
Just two weeks ago I embarked on a week-long Civil Rights Tour led by Washington, D.C. historian Dr. Bernard Demczuk, where he took the group on his annual pilgrimage to Mississippi.
I remember commenting to Demczuk that I was very uncomfortable that he had a whole day dedicated to Till. From my childhood years, the image of Till’s brutalized face has always tortured me. I was born in New York City nine years after Till’s untimely death and my parents did everything they could to shield us from the horrors of race in America. We never ever visited the South. I wasn’t even allowed to accompany my great Aunt to her maid’s job working for a wealthy Manhattan family.
Demczuk shared that doing a deep dive of exploring all of the places related to Till’s journey in Mississippi would help us come to terms with the issues of race in this country. So, the all-day trip to track Till’s last days, when he made that fateful trip from Chicago to visit Mississippi, stayed on the calendar.
The group drove Rt. 49 South, which is deep in the Delta. We passed by miles and miles of cotton fields and forlorn shacks, where sharecroppers made their homes. The soil is rich, and as we passed the land of sun, swamps and cotton, I thought of how much wealth in this developing nation came about because of the work of enslaved Black people and sharecroppers who were never given their fair share for the labor and wealth that they brought to the country.
Our group spent time at the Sumner Courthouse.
We then visited with Mayor Johnny B. Thomas of Glendora, Mississippi. Thomas took an original Glendora cotton gin and transformed the building into the Emmett Till Historic Intrepid Center (the ETHIC museum). Till’s torture and killing greatly affected Thomas’ life. His own father, a poor sharecropper, was forced to help abduct the teenager.
We walked the bridge over the river and drove to the Tallahatchie River, the site where Emmett’s decomposed, swollen and disfigured body was found. We spent time in Money, Mississippi, the site of Emmett’s kidnapping. We stood on the ground where the store of the alleged incident was in rubles, soon to be rebuilt as a replica of the original store.
The whole day was surreal. When I think back, there were two comforting visions. One was meeting a local Black man peacefully walking to the river to fish for catfish. The other was the knowledge that all the men in our group reported that they had urinated on the site of the store where Donham told the lie about Till.
Looking around there, it was hard to feel triumph that times have changed. Sixty-eight years later, the poverty rate of this small city is reported to be at 99.1% with the average household income at $13,382. State-wide, Mississippi has the highest rate of poverty in this country at 21.9% with the average household income for a family of four at $24,250. Prisonpolicy.org reports that the current incarceration rate for Mississippi is 1,031 people per 100,000 people. They report that Mississippi locks up a higher percentage of people than “ANY democracy on earth.”
I felt the strength of resistance and survival in the people I met. But I must counter that feeling with the facts that just earlier this month, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot by an 84-year-old white man named Andrew Lester when he went to the wrong address to pick up younger siblings. Lester, who claims he shot the boy because he was “scared to death” of this 140-pound 5 foot 8 teenager ringing his doorbell. Lester then posted bond and went free.
How do we change the narrative that it is still OK to kill Black people with the excuse that white folks are afraid of us? Almost 70 years later after Emmitt Till’s killing, we have a new civil rights and social justice movement.
Our next battlefront includes fighting for universal healthcare, affordable housing, jobs with real wages and benefits; free childcare for working parents; free community college; and a four-day workweek.
Going to the Mississippi Delta and spending the day with the spirit of Emmett Till inspired me to more acutely challenge the rise of the same white supremacy today that murdered the teenager in 1955. White supremacy today continues economic instability and injustice, keeping poor people struggling, and Black people targets of trigger-happy Ameriguns. Say his name, again and again. Emmett Till – Ashe.
Beverly Hunt is a Maryland-based public relations consultant.