There is no doubt that Emmett Till is a powerful symbol of the civil rights movement in America. His death — and the advocacy of his mother — shocked decent
Joe Biden announced on Saturday that he was creating a national monument to recognize Emmett Till and his mother.
In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was visiting relatives in the small town of Money, Miss., when Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman working in a grocery store, accused Till of giving her a wolf whistle. Many white men in Mississippi at the time considered such attention from a young black man as tantamount to rape.
The evidence suggests that Donham told her husband Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam about the whistle and also claimed that Till made sexual advances toward her. Such an accusation was guaranteed to bring about the events that subsequently unfolded. The two men kidnapped Till, tortured him, lynched him, and then shot him.
The subsequent trial found both men not guilty. Bryant later admitted to the crime in an interview with Look Magazine, and Donham claimed she didn’t know what would happen to Till. An unserved warrant for her arrest was found years later.
There is no doubt that what happened to Emmett Till was an abomination — a stain on the conscience and soul of America. But what happened to Till — as brutally and nauseatingly racist as it was — could not be considered “unusual.
