August 28th Marks a Solemn Reminder of Our Nation’s Complicated History
By Jeffery Robinson
On August 28, thousands of people will converge on Washington, DC, to celebrate and honor the rights of Black Americans to vote, be free from racist policing, and have access to reparations as outlined by H.R. 40. In the 156 years since the end of the Civil War, these issues have largely gone unaddressed and totally ignored in the case of reparations. Reckoning with racism requires a willingness to look at the truth of why these issues have been ignored and reflecting on another solemn anniversary remembered today – when the body of 14-year-old Emmett Till was found floating in the Tallahatchie River, tied to a metal cotton gin fan – can help us with that reckoning.
Emmett Till’s body revealed the sadistic torture he endured after he was kidnapped four days earlier. He was castrated and had his teeth knocked out. He had barbed wire around his neck, was missing his left ear, and his wrists were broken. All of this for a lie told by a white woman.
Roy Bryant and an associate named J.W. Milam were charged with the crime. Bryant’s wife, Carolyn Bryant, claimed Till threatened her, grabbed her, told her obscenities, and said he had been with white women before. An all-white, all-male jury acquitted both men in about 63 minutes. They admitted their guilt after the verdict.
Decades later, Carolyn Bryant admitted that she lied about Emmett Till. That admission did little to assuage what the general public knew about the final hours of Emmett Till’s life. They saw pictures of Bryant and Milam smiling, smirking, and laughing at the trial, showing how confident they were of the outcome. These and other images of the reality of white supremacy and anti-Black racism in America exposed the truth about what was tolerated in this “land of the free.” The visualization of this reality was an essential part of what sparked the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s.
Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, was not paralyzed by her grief. She used an open casket covered with glass at her son’s funeral so Americans would see her son’s bloated and brutalized body and recognize part of what was to come in our country. Her willingness to open her grief to public view was an act of courage.
Today, it is easy to recognize a throughline from that violent imagery to the videos we see of unjustified police violence in Black communities. Studies, reports, and commissions going back as far as 1919 in Chicago have highlighted the role of racism in the way our laws are written and enforced. It took 9 minutes of video of an officer choking the life out of George Floyd to refute the initial police narrative – repeated at trial – that Mr. Floyd’s death was his own fault.
When voting laws are framed as protecting against illegal voting in the absence of any significant evidence of illegal voting, we cannot forget the history of deliberate suppression of the Black vote as we consider what should be done today. We must remember that Stacey Abrams and other activists in Georgia did not bring out illegal votes – they empowered American citizens to vote.
In 1967 king reflected on his “dream” speech, given four years before, saying: “I must confess that uh, that dream that I had that day has in many points, turned into a nightmare… we got our gains over the last 12 years at bargain rates, so to speak. It didn’t cost the nation anything. In fact, it helped the economic side of the nation to integrate lunch counters and public accommodations. It didn’t cost the nation anything to get the right to vote established.”
King was reckoning with the fact that America has a moral, ethical, and legal obligation to act to repair the damage caused by the institution of slavery and its vestiges which exist until today. He expected more from America in the four years since 1963, and he was disappointed. His words serve as a warning that easy, cosmetic fixes will not impact the core issues behind the problems with racism in America. This is the message of many H.R. 40 activists.
As we approach August 28, 2021, Americans cannot afford to forget King’s words or the gruesome discovery made on August 28, 66 years before. We cannot afford to waste the courageous path started by people like Mamie Till.