Cousin of Emmett Till Speaks Tonight at Willamette

The vicious killing of an African/American boy in Mississippi in 1955 stands as one of the most flagrant abuses of American justice, and it started the Civil Rights Movement.

Emmett Till and his mother Mammie in Chicago Photos courtesy: blackcollegewire.org, brooksschool.org, africaresource.com, content.answers.com

(SALEM) - Civil Rights speakers will discuss the Emmett Till Case and southern racism tonight at Willamette University in the Smith Auditorium at 7:00 PM.

Wheeler Parker

Wheeler Parker, the cousin of Emmett Till, is among the featured guests. Footage from a 2004 “60 Minutes” program will provide background on the Till murder case. Wheeler will be accompanied by Olympia Vernon, who will read from her widely praised novel, “A Killing in This Town.” The event is free to the public.

I just reviewed the story of Emmett Till and I have to tell you, there are few things in American history that rival the plight of southern blacks in the 1950's.

That isn't to say that problems weren't always placed like obstacles in the way of nearly every African American raised there before the Civil Rights Movement and still today in places, but the 50's were perverted years for these racists, who stole life from thousands of blacks.

Emmett Till was a 14-year old boy from Chicago who visited relatives in Mississippi in August, 1955. He was warned of the dire retaliations taking place toward any people of color who stepped out of line. Sadly, Emmett either didn't believe it, or refused to be part of it.

Abandoned Bryant's Store

As the fateful story goes, Emmett had apparently bragged to kids in the Mississippi town that in Chicago, black boys could talk to white girls without fear of reprisal. The local kids didn't believe it, so they dared him to go into

He either whistled at, or spoke to, a white woman at Bryant's grocery store in Money, Mississippi. The woman called in her people and a plan was devised to take revenge on the boy for having spoken to a white woman. The alleged comment according to his friends, was saying "bye baby" as he walked out of the store.

That night he was tracked down at his great uncle's house by the woman's husband and his half-brother, drug outside, then tortured and murdered.

Wheeler Parker, Jr., was in the house the night Milam and Bryant came for the boy, and will describe the events of that night. He will also share intimate details about Till’s childhood and the atmosphere in Money, Mississippi at that time.

A 14-year old boy, taken from a family home, and drug into a barn where he was treated unmercifully by people who taunted him. But they say Emmett held his ground, in spite of the brutality, in spite of the fact that he was just a boy, and that's when they shot him. His body was thrown into a lake where it was discovered several days later.

Brothers Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam

The two brother murderers were acquitted for the crime within an hour. Members of the 12-man white jury had conspired in the murder.

Emmett's mother Mammie Till held an open-casket service and her son's brutalized and decomposed face was viewed by tens of thousands. His murder sparked the Civil Rights Movement in America and 100 days after Emmett's murder, a black woman, Rosa Parks, refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a segregated Montgomery, Alabama city bus.

Olympia Vernon

During the event, Olympia Vernon, the new Hallie Brown Ford Chair at Willamette University, will read from her third novel, “A Killing in This Town,” which features Adam Pickens, a young white boy in Bullock, Miss., who must, upon his 13th birthday, lynch a black man in order to be initiated into the Ku Klux Klan.

Kirkus Reviews wrote, “This is a powerful, difficult work by a writer absolutely determined to see,” and Publishers Weekly wrote that the “fugue of folk idiom, blues, biblical diction and surreal imagery makes for lots of atmosphere.” All three of Vernon’s novels have been praised by The New York Times Book Review.

It isn't a hard subject to be emotional about, and the lyrics of a Bob Dylan song from 1963 freeze in time the frustrations of a nation embattled with inherent racism.

The Death of Emmett Till
by Bob Dylan
1963

"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago,
When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door.
This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well,
The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up.
They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what.
They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat.
There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain
And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain.
The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie,
Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial,
Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till.
But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime,
And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see
The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs.
For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free,
While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust,
Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust.
Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow,
For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man
That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan.
But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give,
We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.

Copyright © 1963; renewed 1991 Special Rider Music

Tim King in 2008, covering the Iraq War

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