#From Ralph Yarl to Emmett Till | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

reasoningdaily · 1 year ago

Text

Ralph Yarl was on his way to get his brothers. The 16-year-old headed to pick up the twin boys from their friend’s home, accidentally mixed up the address, ending up at a house on Northeast 115 Street instead of Northeast 115th Terrace—an honest mistake anyone could have made. This one nearly cost him his life.

Ralph rang the doorbell, prepared to greet his brother and make their way home. He instead was met by 84-year-old Andrew Lester, who shot Ralph in the head through the glass door. Lester then shot Ralph again in the arm after Ralph fell. Despite his injuries, Ralph somehow made it to not one, not two but three neighbor’s homes, one of which Ralph to get down on the ground with his hands up. A different neighbor finally came valiantly to Ralph’s aid.

Ralph would end up spending days in a hospital recovering from his wounds—for knocking on the wrong door.

Andrew Lester, who shot Ralph, later told investigators he was “scared to death” by Ralph’s size and his own potential inability to defend himself. As much as people would like to believe Ralph Yarl’s story is an outlier, unfortunately, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened to a Black child.

In April of 2018, then-14-year-old Brennan Walker did what many kids have accidentally done— missed his school bus. He stopped by a home that looked safe, one bearing a sign that said “Neighborhood Watch,” to ask for directions. The home belonged to Jeffery Zeigler. Instead of giving the teen directions to his school, Zeigler ended up shooting at Brennan, who ran for his life. Zeigler's wife screamed at the teen and called the police, saying that a Black male was trying to break into her house and her husband chased after him into the yard.

Luckily Brennan escaped, physically unharmed.

Not all kids are so lucky. In June of 2021, Coby Daniel, then 6 years old, left his bike in front of his neighbor’s home while playing outside with his friends. The neighbor, Ryan Le-Nguyen, threatened the child with a sledgehammer, then when back into his own house and fired at Coby, hitting him in his arm.

In May of 2012, 13-year-old Darius Simmons watched his mother, Patricia Larry be confronted by their neighbor, John Henry Spooner, who accused Darius and his older brother, of stealing his shotguns. When she attempted to verbally defend her sons, Spooner drew his 9mm at her. Darius, who was at school at the time Spooner’s guns were stolen, denied he stole the weapons. Spooner shot Darius close range in the chest. He later died.

Note the similarities: Zeiglar’s wife assumed that a Black boy who was knocking on her door was attempting to break into their home, Spooner assumed the Black kids in his neighborhood had robbed him, and Lester said he was “scared to death” by Yarl’s size. These are not random wacky misconceptions but are, too often, the biased views neighbors hold about Black children—that they are delinquent, deceptive, and dangerous.

Black children are “adultified” or viewed and treated as adults and even punished like them. Adultification is a legacy of enslavement and results in Black children receiving harsher punishments in school, being 18 times more likely to be criminally sentenced as adults than white children their same age1.

One study found that Black teen boys, in particular, are viewed as “less innocent” and therefore less in need of protection or care, while a separate study found that perceptions around Black teen boys, in particular, viewed them as “adultlike,” bigger, and more formidable.

This misconception of formidability and the absence of innocence leads to fear and suspicion. But fear or suspicion too often leads to Black kids’ harm or worse, their deaths.

Thirteen-year-old Sinzae Reed was sitting outside of an apartment building. Fifteen-year-old Jordan Edwards was riding in a car leaving a party. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was playing in the park with a toy gun. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon Martin was walking home after school in the rain. Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was spending the summer with his cousins, and with the death of Carolyn Bryant, no one has been held accountable for his gruesome murder to date.

These were all Black boys who were perceived as community threats. They should've been able to play outside or ask for directions or show up at the wrong door without fear of losing their lives.

These Black boys deserved to be seen and treated as children.

#adultification of Black Kids #adultification is racism.#racism against children #Black Children Matter #From Ralph Yarl to Emmett Till #Neighbors Present An Enormous Threat to Black Boys #Ralph Yarl #Emmett Till #Tamir Rice #Trayvon Martin #Ayanna Stanley

7 notes · View notes

theivorybilledwoodpecker · 2 years ago

Text

Who was Emmet Till?

I wanted to post this because Carolyn Bryant Donham just died, and people will be seeing Emmett's name in the news. While I hope most people know his story, I know not everyone does. I remember in college the professor mentioning his story as a topic people could write an essay on, and two other students, both at least 10 years older than I, not knowing who he was.

Emmett was a 14-year-old African American boy from Chicago. In 1955, he was visiting relatives in Mississippi. He and some friends were in a grocery store.

The owner's wife, a white woman named Carolyn Bryant, alleged that he grabbed her by the waist and propositioned her. Some people say he merely wolf-whistled at her. And other say absolutely nothing happened.

Four days later, Carolyn's husband, Roy Bryant, and his brother, John Milam, drove to Emmett's relatives house and kidnapped him. They beat and mutilated him before shooting him and throwing Emmett's body in the river.

When his relatives notified his mother Emmett was missing, Bryant and Milam were questioned by police and admitted to the kidnapping...but said they had let Emmett go.

When Emmett's body was found days later, the men were put on trial for murder. Decades later, an arrest warrant for Carolyn Bryant would be found, but it was never served. The all-white male jury deliberated only a little over hour, and they admitted it only took that long because they stopped for a drink at one point. They voted to aquit both men of murder. A separate jury later voted to aquit them of kidnapping.

Jurors would later admit they believed the men to be guilty, but did not think they should be punished.

After the trial, Roy Bryant and John Milam sold their confession for $4k to a newspaper. That was a huge amount of money back then.

There was never any justice done for Emmett. They lived the rest of their lives without serving a day in jail for his murder.

In 2008, Carolyn Bryant allegedly told a writer that she had lied on the stand about what had happened. This was not caught on tape, and she later denied it happened....but I mean...multiple witnesses have said either that nothing happened or that all Emmett did was whistle. I'm inclined to believe she was a lying cunt who made it all up.

Now, Carolyn Bryant is dead, may she burn in hell.

But it's important that no one ever forget Emmett Till. You see, it's not just that he was murdered, suffering what no child should ever need to go through. But these things are still happening today.

James Craig Anderson. Trayvon Martin. Tamir Rice. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd. Elijah Mcclain.

And recently, Ralph Yarl could have very easily died.

We've come along way. Some of the murderers get convicted now. But what happened to Emmett Till could all too easily happen again.

#Emmett Till

18 notes · View notes

cyarsk52-20 · 2 years ago

Text

Why Black Boys Are Never Allowed to Make Mistakes in America https://momentum.medium.com/why-black-boys-are-never-allowed-to-make-mistakes-in-america-45f668d2e931

Allison Wiltz

Apr 18

5 min read

Listen

Save

RACISM

Why Black Boys Are Never Allowed to Make Mistakes in America

Even ringing the wrong doorbell can end violently

Noone is perfect. In fact, if there is one thing that all people have in common, we’re bound to make mistakes. We’re even taught not to cry over spilled milk. “To err is human,” an Enlightenment poet, Alexander Pope, said, a phrase that’s remained salient throughout the ages as a testament to our imperfections. However, in American society, Black people are rarely given grace and are often violently punished for committing even the slightest faux pas. And this phenomenon is especially true for Black boys.

In 1955, two White men lynched Emmett Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, for allegedly whistling at a White woman, Carolyn Bryant, in Mississippi. Of course, years later, Carolyn admitted she lied, that Till never whistled at her, but the punishment had already been dolled out. So not only was Till’s murder based on a false accusation, but it also illustrates just how little leeway Black boys have in America. Because even if a Black boy whistled at a White woman, something once seen as a social violation in the racist deep south, it’s preposterous to believe killing him would be an appropriate penalty.

When a Black boy takes a misstep in America, he’s likely to fall into a pit of white rage.

Do you know how we know racism inspired Till’s lynching? If the roles were reversed, and a Black woman accused a White boy of whistling at her or acting inappropriately, there would be no consequences, let alone a violent, extrajudicial response. White boys and men brutalizing Black women is an undercurrent in America’s stream of consciousness. For instance, in May 1870, “fifteen White men raped a Black woman while other members of the mob lynched her husband.” Of course, no charges were filed against the White men, a typical reaction from southern White prosecutors during the Jim Crow era. And the irony isn’t lost on the Black community that a White guilty man has a better chance of evading punishment in America than a Black innocent man or boy. It’s a disturbing pattern.

Black teenager shot twice for ringing on the wrong doorbell.

When a Black boy takes a misstep in America, he’s likely to fall into a pit of white rage. For instance, last week, when 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, a Black teenager, rang the doorbell of a home in Kansas City, Missouri, to pick up his siblings, an 85-year-old White man, Andrew Lester, who answered the door shot Yarl twice, once in the head, and then in the arm after the teenager had already fallen to the ground in pain. According to Faith Spoonmore, Ralph’s aunt, “he mistakenly went to the wrong house, one block away from the house where his siblings were.” One mistake, mixing up one house for another, was enough to put Yarl’s life in jeopardy.

This tragedy was avoidable. If Lester had taken the time to ask Ralph why he was there, he would have discovered a teenage boy looking for his siblings. But instead, he saw a Black boy, made assumptions about his intentions and character, and shot him, a decision that could have ended Ralph’s life. Yarl, who spent days in intensive care, has been released from the hospital and is expected to make a full recovery. And, after days of protests, local officials charged Lester with first-degree assault and armed criminal action. Many have suggested the prosecutor was reluctant to press charges on the day of the incident because the defendant is White. All too often, prosecutors drag their feet when it’s time to press charges against a White person suspected of violence against Black people. It’s also perplexing that the prosecutor is not seeking attempted murder charges, even though Ralph could have died from a gunshot wound in the head and arm. If shooting someone in the head doesn’t count as attempted murder, I don’t know what does. And if the tables were turned, and a Black man shot a White teenage boy in the head, I doubt prosecutors would have hesitated to charge him with attempted murder.

According to attorney Lee Merritt, Lester, an elderly white man, told Yarl, “don’t come backaround here,” and “immediately fired his weapon,” without allowing the Black teenager to respond. Ringing the wrong doorbell, an innocent mistake, shouldn’t end with a teenager being shot in the head, but racism breeds contempt; it makes White men like Lester see Black boys as inherently dangerous and criminal. For instance, when three White men, Travis McMichael, his father, Gregory McMichael, and their neighbor William Bryan saw a 25-year-old Black man, Ahmaud Arbery, jogging through their Georgia community in the winter of 2020, they assumed he was guilty of committing crimes. Without any evidence, they sought to punish Arbery, leading Travis McMichael to follow and eventually shoot and kill him. Time and time again, White people’s racist beliefs about Black boys and men put their lives in danger.

Lester, the man accused of shooting Ralph Yarl, was born during the 1930s, during the Jim Crow Era, when discriminating against Black people was socially acceptable, and violence against Black people was applauded rather than condemned by the masses, which undoubtedly impacted his views. It’s likely that Lester treated a Black boy ringing the doorbell like a violent intruder because racism fosters irrational fear. And racist stereotypes targeting Black boys persist amongst much younger White men, as we saw in the case of Ahmaud Arbery.

One of the most disturbing trends in American culture is the way Black boys are adultified and stigmatized, reduced to stereotypical tropes. Racism isn’t harmless. Lester assuming Ralph was violent or troublesome, endangered his life. Black boys can’t even ring the wrong doorbell in America without being met with cruelty and racism, and that’s a reflection of our society’s failure to confront racism and challenge racist beliefs.

How Black People Are Deprived of Fight or Flight Response

When it comes to confrontations with the police, Black people are asked to do something strange

momentum.medium.com

The Harm of Calling Daunte Wright’s Death an Accident

Giving the police the benefit of the doubt undermines the victims

momentum.medium.com

What Does Justice Look Like For Ahmaud Arbery, His Family, and The Black Community?

All eyes are on Georgia as three White men face charges for felony murder and attempted false imprisonment.

zora.medium.com

Author’s Note: Yarl’s case also reminds me of another case where an innocent Black boy was shot due to prejudicial assumptions. In 2012, a police officer shot and killed Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old Black boy, as he played with a toy gun because he assumed it was real and Tamir was a threat. A grand jury “declined to charge” Cleveland officers.

🌹Learn more about the author here. 🖊Sign up to read all my stories and thousands more.

Racism

BlackLivesMatter

Psychology

Life

Health

722

Enjoy the read? Reward the writer.Beta

Your tip will go to Allison Wiltz through a third-party platform of their choice, letting them know you appreciate their story.Give a tip

By Momentum

A newsletter by Momentum that keeps the conversation going Take a look.

Get this newsletter

By signing up, you will create a Medium account if you don’t already have one. Review our Privacy Policy for more information about our privacy practices.