Emmett Till’s mother Mamie grieving at her son’s casket.
Emmett and Mamie Till
August 28 is the anniversary of a major spark of the modern Civil Rights Movement. On that day in 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was brutally murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi. He was from Chicago and was in Mississippi visiting family. Although his killers were well known, an all white jury acquitted them in a sham trial. That could have been just another lynching that received little attention in a society that placed little value on Black lives. Yet that changed when his mother Mamie made the courageous decision to have an open casket funeral that showed her son’s mutilated body. Black publications including Jet magazine covered the funeral and printed the photo of Emmett’s brutally disfigured body. This sent shock waves around the nation and forced America to face the reality of the racially motivated murder of an innocent Black teenager. Although there were always Black people who actively resisted racism throughout our nation’s history, many scholars date the modern Civil Rights movement from 1954-55 that included both the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision and the murder of Emmett Till.
Sixty seven years after his murder, Emmett Till’s legacy continues to impact our society. There is a direct through line from the witness of Mamie Till in demanding the nation to recognize the value of her son’s life to the public actions of the Black Lives Matter movement. Recently Black leaders in Maryland developed a system called “Emmett Till Alerts.” Modeled on the concept of the well known Amber Alert, its purpose is to notify Black leaders of hate crimes so that they can raise awareness and mobilize responses to those crimes. The catalyst for this system was several incidents of race based vandalism of Black churches in at least three Maryland counties.
Carl Snowden, a Maryland civil rights leader said, “There are racial incidents that occur in America and Maryland on a regular basis. Most people have no idea that they occurred. We think that they’re just isolated incidents…Through this Emmett Till Alert, when a racial incident of any kind occurs, we will be able to communicate to” people like other civil rights leaders, politicians, and clergy throughout the state…It’s important because we have to have a rapid response. When incidents like this take place we must show up. We must be able to bring our resources.”
Although it is currently limited to Maryland, the Emmett Till Alerts have the potential to become a national system in the ongoing struggle against racial hate crimes. Following the example of Mamie Till, people of faith are called to find ways to resist racial hate that both raise awareness and mobilize responses which lift up the value of lives threatened by racism. The two videos posted below provide more information about the murder of Emmett Till and the courageous witness and activism of Mamie Till.