#the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till

[elijones94]

👊🏾 “Freedom is never free.” ~ Medgar Evers (1925-1963) ✊🏾🇺🇸

[whenweallvote]

"When people saw what had happened to my son, men stood up who had never stood up before." - Mamie Till Mobley

#OnThisDay in 1941, Emmett Till was born, and his legacy lives with us forever. At 14 years old, he was kidnapped, murdered, and lynched in Mississippi by two white men after an alleged interaction with a white woman.

Today, we honor his life and his mother’s bravery in the face of fear and intimidation, which served as a catalyst for the civil rights movement.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

The Daily Don

* * * *

President Biden to name national monument for Emmet Till and his mother.

          The brutal torture and murder of Emmett Till followed by his mother’s decision to hold an “open casket” funeral changed America. In 1955, a young Black teenager, Emmett Till, was abducted and killed because a white woman accused Till of “whistling” at her and grabbing her wrist. (The woman later recanted the accusations during an interview for a book.) Till’s nearly unrecognizable body was pulled from a river, where it was weighted with a 75-pound cotton gin fan secured to his neck by barbed wire. Nearly 250,000 people walked past his casket, and hundreds of thousands more saw photos of Till’s mutilated body in his casket.

          Two white men were charged with the murder and acquitted by an all-white jury. The defendants confessed to the crime a few months later in an interview given to Look Magazine—for which they were paid $4,000, a hefty sum in 1956. Having been previously acquitted, they could not be tried again for murder because of the Constitution’s double jeopardy prohibition.

          Emmett Till’s murder and his mother’s bravery in holding an open-casket funeral galvanized the nascent civil rights movement and helped to inspire a generation of civil rights leaders, including Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King. On Monday, President Biden announced that he is declaring three sites as a national monument to Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. See NYTimes, Biden to Name National Monument for Emmett Till and His Mother. (This article is accessible to all.)

          President Biden’s actions come at a moment of renewed overt racism in America. Florida’s new history curriculum includes prompts asking students to consider ways in which slavery “benefitted” enslaved persons by giving them skills they could use after emancipation. See Florida’s State Academic Standards—Social Studies, 2023. The linked document includes the following “benchmark” standard (on page 6):

Benchmark Clarifications: Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.

          The proposed “benchmark clarification” is a stunning revision to an institution where white owners profited from forced labor by enslaved persons. To suggest that any part of that forced labor was “beneficial” is a cruel and dishonest whitewashing of a vile institution. But Ron DeSantis nonetheless defended a “pro-slavery” curriculum that his culture war unleashed in Florida. See The Independent, DeSantis defends Florida curriculum that suggests slaves benefited from forced labor.

          But the Academic Standards linked above are far worse than the media portrays. The issue is not a single snippet—the language quoted above—it is the entire approach to teaching the history of slavery in the United States. I invite you to review pages 5 through 10 of the Academic Standards, and you will discover that much of the curriculum is devoted to describing slavery in Africa, Europe, and Asia—apparently to make the disgusting point that “everyone else was doing it.” For example, the “benchmark clarifications” on page 9 include the following:

Benchmark Clarifications: Clarification 1: Instruction includes how trading in slaves developed in African lands (e.g., Benin, Dahomey). Clarification 2: Instruction includes the practice of the Barbary Pirates in kidnapping Europeans and selling them into slavery in Muslim countries (i.e., Muslim slave markets in North Africa, West Africa, Swahili Coast, Horn of Africa, Arabian Peninsula, Indian Ocean slave trade). Clarification 3: Instruction includes how slavery was utilized in Asian cultures (e.g., Sumerian law code, Indian caste system). Clarification 4: Instruction includes the similarities between serfdom and slavery and emergence of the term “slave” in the experience of Slavs. Clarification 5: Instruction includes how slavery among indigenous peoples of the Americas was utilized prior to and after European colonization.

          All of the above smacks of a white-racist defense of slavery in the US. Thankfully, Joe Biden is resisting the effort by the right to erase America’s shameful history of slavery and Jim Crow laws that enforced a system of apartheid for nearly a century after the Civil War.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

[militantinremission]

Carolyn Bryant- Donham: Ding Dong the Witch is Dead!

Mainstream Media was quick to announce the death of Carolyn Bryant @ 88Yrs Old, but many kept their storylines short & sweet. Another Day in The Life, under the Biden Administration. Bryant reportedly died in hospice care in Westlake, Louisiana. Details were not given by the Coroner of cause of Death, but Bryant's battle w/ Cancer was not exactly a secret. New Black Media has reported in recent Yrs on how she was initially in Raleigh- Durham, North Carolina, before being moved to Kentucky, & later Louisiana.

Back in June 2022, members of Emmett Till's family discovered an Arrest Warrant issued for 'Mrs Roy Bryant', among Records @ the Lefore County Courthouse in Mississippi. The warrant was issued back in 1955, citing the charge of Kidnapping; but it was never served. The Till Family attempted to reissue that warrant, citing Carolyn Bryant's [recent] admission of perjury in the Trial of Emmett Till's brutal murder. In her 2017 interview w/ Dr. Timothy Tyson, Bryant allegedly admitted to lying on The Stand.

Unfortunately, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch didn't think the case presented any new evidence, & in Aug. 2022, The Grand Jury declined to indict Bryant. As recently as Feb. 7th 2023, Emmett Till's cousin, Priscilla Sterling tried to compel Lefore County Sheriff Ricky Banks to reissue the warrant on Carolyn Bryant; but as of April 13th, she was informed that there was 'no point' in reissuing the warrant, since the Grand Jury declined last August.

Some lament missing the opportunity to send Carolyn Bryant- Donham to Prison. She lived a full life, while Emmett's life was brutally ended before it truly began. Bryant lived in anonymity for decades, until The New Black Panther Party & other Activists began showing up @ her addresses in North Carolina & Kentucky- to issue an 'Unofficial Warrant for her Arrest'. Some complained that Blackfolk were terrorizing an 'Old Lady', but no one says anything, when Nazi Hunters take individuals in their Nineties to justice.

The whole Emmett Till 'Tragedy' revolves around the Culture of protecting a White Woman's 'Honor'- whether she's worthy or not. Emmett Till & Carolyn Bryant are the only ones who know what really happened on Aug. 24th, 1955. According to Emmett's cousins, he was in the Store for a minute before they entered; they didn't know if he knew how to 'act' around a White Woman. From what they saw, Emmett didn't say or do anything threatening; they admit to hearing him whistle @ her. Carolyn Bryant initially concurred, but in Court, she recounted a different story.

In her Court Testimony, Bryant recounted how (14Yr Old) Emmett "put his left hand on my waist, and he put his other hand on the other side." When she rebuffed him, he replied: "What's the matter baby? Can't you take it?" She went on to say that Emmett uttered obscenities that she refused to repeat in Court, but related to his sexual prowess w/ White Women. According to Press Reports, Bryant gave the [unmistakable] impression of being afraid that Emmett might rape her. The Jury took about an hour to deliberate; the Foreman said that it would've been shorter, but they decided on having a [Soda] Pop.

In his 2017 interview, Dr. Tyson says that Carolyn Bryant- Donham told him that her testimony about Emmett grabbing her & uttering obscenities was 'not true'. Unfortunately, his recording of that interview was not enough to change the Grand Jury's opinion about reissuing the 1955 Arrest Warrant. For the most part, The State of Mississippi & The Federal Government were more concerned about the welfare of Carolyn Bryant, than the Family of Emmett Till. The Press described her as a former Beauty Queen that was raised in Poverty, w/ little Education or 'Knowledge of The World'... She was a product of her environment.

Following her death, Dr. Tyson wrote that 'Carolyn Bryant's precise role in the murder of Emmett Till remains murky, but it's clear that she was involved.' It appears that Bryant was in the car when her husband abducted Emmett; she pointed him out. By the time they reached the Store to drop her off, Dr. Tyson says that Bryant may have learned Emmett's fate, & was now saying that he wasn't the boy. In her interview, Bryant says that Emmett didn't do anything that warranted what was done to him. It appears that Emmett's Big Crime, was putting money in Carolyn Bryant's hand, & not on the counter.

Dr. Tyson speaks on how American Society views the Emmett Till Lynching as a story of 'Monsters', including Bryant. Professor Black Truth often speaks about how [White] Society operates on Moral Relativity & Situational Ethics. Applying them here, we can easily see how Dr. Tyson concludes that Society finds it easier to condemn Carolyn Bryant- Donham's actions, than confronting what America is. It's a big reason why both Democrats & Republicans have problems w/ Critical Race Theory (CRT).

For all of the aid & comfort that The State of Mississippi provided Carolyn Bryant- Donham, I can't stop thinking about Emmett... What was that 14Yr Old boy thinking when those grown White Men took him out of his family's house? Took him to that barn where they beat him mercilessly, shot him in the head, tied him to a 70lb Cotton Gin Wheel, & dumped his body into the river... As bad as that Jet Magazine Cover of Emmett's face looked, I can't get past the sheer TERROR he must have felt being alone, in the presence of Pure Evil.

I personally hope that Carolyn Bryant- Donham gets the Full Tour of 'Dante's Hell'... I'll even cover the tribute to Cerberus.

[theivorybilledwoodpecker]

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.

[quill-the-tired-one]

Emmett Till was a 14 year old boy from Chicago visiting family in Mississippi. He was accused of whistling at a white woman. Till was black and at that time and place, this was a serious offense. Till was kidnapped, tortured, and lynched. Emmett Till died on August 28, 1955 in Drew, MS at the age of 14. His mother, Mamie Till, fought for years to bring justice to her son's murderers, but justice was never served. Rest In Peace, Emmett Till. You were failed.

[historydailyfrancischappellblack]

History Daily: August 28

Image: Emmett Till (Wikimedia Commons)

On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American boy from Chicago, is viciously murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.

His murderers—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.

Three days later, his body was recovered but was so disfigured that he could only identify it by an initialed ring. Authorities wanted to bury the body quickly, but Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley, requested it be sent back to Chicago.

After seeing the mutilated remains, she decided to have an open-casket funeral so that all the world could see what racist murderers had done to her only son. Jet, an African-American magazine, published a photo of Emmett’s corpse, and soon the mainstream media picked up on the story.

Less than two weeks after Emmett’s body was buried, Milam and Bryant, the two murderers, went on trial in a segregated courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi. There were few witnesses besides Mose Wright, who positively identified the defendants as Emmett’s killers.

On September 23, the all-white jury deliberated for less than an hour before issuing a verdict of “not guilty,” explaining that they believed the state had failed to prove the identity of the body. Many people around the country were furious by the decision and by the state’s decision not to indict Milam and Bryant on the separate charge of kidnapping.

The Emmett Till murder trial brought to light the brutality of Jim Crow segregation in the South and was an early impetus of the civil rights movement.

HORSE RACES A TRAIN

Image: Passengers enjoy their ride in a carriage pulled by the replica Tom Thumb.

Roaring, hissing, growling, clanking, the locomotives of the steam era not only resembled great beasts but were given names to match their status: Big Boys that hurled freight across the craggy American landscape; the UK’s Flying Scotsman; and the Fairy Queen, which still occasionally travels the tracks between New Delhi and Alwar in India.

But none of this was of great concern to no-nonsense Peter Cooper, the inventor and industrialist who designed and built the first American steam locomotive. He called it . . . Tom Thumb.

On August 28, 1830, Cooper accepted a challenge to prove that his mechanical power was greater than horsepower.

Until this point in time, rail companies in America, such as the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad (B&O) relied on horses to pull their passenger and freight trains, even though steam locomotives were used elsewhere in the world.

But that tradition was about to end when B&O directors were given a ride aboard Tom Thumb from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills, Maryland (now Ellicott City). They were amazed that the locomotive could achieve speeds of 10-14 miles per hour.

Then, according to legend, Tom Thumb took part in a famous race with a horse-drawn car while returning from a trip to Ellicott Mills. The locomotive was well ahead of the horse-drawn car until a mechanical fault caused the engine to lose steam, and the horse reached the finishing line first.

The event is a staple of American folklore though there is no documentation to substantiate it. Nevertheless, B&O was clearly impressed with Tom Thumb and ran this notice in newspapers:

The Baltimore and Ohio Rail Road Company being desirous of obtaining a supply of locomotive steam engines of American manufacture, adapted to their road, have given public notice that they will pay the sum of Four Thousand Dollars (equivalent to $136,000 in 2022 dollars) for the most approved engine which shall be delivered for trial upon the road on or before the first of June, 1831.

Although Tom Thumb is known as the first successful American steam locomotive, hauling passengers until at least March 1831, it was never put into regular service.

But a replica was built in 1927 for the B&O Railroad Museum and still runs today. The locomotive appeared on a US postage stamp in 1952.

GERMANY GETS READY TO INVADE POLAND

August 28, 1939. Journalist Care Hollingworth observes the “large numbers of troops, literally hundreds of tanks, armored cars and field guns” Germany had aligned along the Polish border. Three days later, Hitler invades Poland and WWII begins.

Image: Left to right, top to bottom: Luftwaffe bombers over Poland; Schleswig-Holstein attacking the Westerplatte; Danzig Police destroying the Polish border post; German tank and armored car formation; German and Soviet troops shaking hands; bombing of Warsaw. (Wikimedia Commons.)

[cyarskaren52]

Fixed It: Lying-ass biiiitch named Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who never punished for causing the kidnap, torture, and murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till, is dead .

[gunsli-01]

Mu and Kotoko did the same thing the fanbase held Futa accountable for doing. In fact, what they did was objectively worse than what Futa was being held accountable for doing.

TL;DR: The reaction to Milgram is just bringing to light again how okay people are with certain framing of events and why forms of oppression are very unlikely to disappear in any of our lifetimes. The generation below mine can act like they're different from their parents or the ones that came before them, but you all lick the same boot. Maybe that's just human nature. It's all the same all the way down.

I've discussed the hypocrisy around Kotoko and Futa already. However, the fact that focus has shifted from bullying is wrong no matter what to everyone makes mistakes just because Mu unsurprisingly to anyone that had eyes and did not give in to a clear racial/white passing bias turned out to be a bully.

In Milgram you can vote under any bias. None of us have to be fair. What I mean by this is no one needs to make excuses for their choices. In fact attempting to excuse it with emotional reasoning is far more insidious and disingenuous. I'd rather see someone say I like her and that's why I'm voting in her favor then have someone bend over backwards to defend a form of oppression I face daily.

She's just a kid. Yeah, kids can be racist, actively aware how to benefit from racial bias, and perpetuate racist power structures. I'm glad you can go I don't see color prick, but I don't have that luxury. It is incredibly obvious why Mu is getting special treatment to the point that both her songs call attention to the specific forms of racial victimization she's using.

Having her cry for minutes on end in her first interrogation to saying she was born with everything, looks money, everything is as she wished and of course it's that way because she was always meant to be pitied in the end. She's the perfect victim. Anyone with any understanding of racism knows what these things mean. That or are at least educated on the effect women that look like Mu crying can have on minorities.

Please, look up any of the numerous and still growing cases or just read a history book. The Emmett Till case just a got a movie have fun with that. Oh, what's that? Well that's just the story of a fourteen-year-old kidnapped, tortured, and murdered because they offended a white woman. Maybe even look over the Trevon Martin case if you've never heard of it. Another teenager shot and killed because they made a white person fear for their life by wearing a hoody and being outside.

Oh, I hear the Mu defenders chime but those are white people Mu is Japanese and French. Okay, look up Asian brutality against individuals of African descent you'd be surprised at what you find. Prominent cases in the US include instances of Asian store owners shotting black children because they assumed they stole something. It's never on the killer in these instances. It's always no the person I killed did something wrong actually and if they hadn't then I wouldn;t have felt the need to react in that way.

Personal experience when I was twelve my cousin who was at home minding his business having a phone call with his girlfriend just about to start college the following year was shot and killed on his front porch. Despite having no prior association to any gangs being an all a student and having multiple scholarships and get this the fact that it was just a random drive by for kicks and not targeted at all. The police response was to interrogate that side of my family about possible gang association, if anyone in the house was selling drugs, ask repeatedly what my cousin could have done to make enemies. Then when it turned out it was nothing, he was just a random teenager with zero priors and well-liked by most of his peers to genuine upset at the turn of events just go sorry, we can't help you find out who killed him tragic, but these things happen wrong place wrong time maybe if he was inside instead of taking a phone call on the front porch.

Then they stopped looking into it because that's life and they weren't there to figure out who killed him anyway they were there to find out if these black people were associated with gangs. Once they figured out no they are not they left. That's the precedent even when certain people are victims of random acts of violence even if it leads to death if it's a particular type of person instead of going tragic many will just go what did they do. Some people don't get the option of being a victim even when they're dead. So, anyone trying to make Mu's victim into the perpetrator- Oh, yeah I think those people are fucked up and there's no conversation to be had there they did what they did and that's that.

Because Mu was scared, it was either that or she'd be dead, she didn't have any other options that's all she said in her first interrogation. Despite being rich with a model mom and landlord dad. Despite being offered modeling jobs outside of school. Mu just had no other options. She couldn't be homeschooled or go study abroad. No, she had to kill a random student from a poor family. Because that student was a danger to her. Because the more dangerous someone is the faster they walk away, right? Why are they running if they're not hiding something if they aren't the bad one and the bully. Regardless of what they did sometimes the fact that they just existed is an offense.

However, people who look like Mu always get the excuse of victimhood always get to hide behind being scared or unsafe. They can always be the drama queen because people will go oh, but they were really scared. No, the fuck she wasn't and the way people keep pushing the idea she was speaks more about society than it does about Mu.

Mu for all her talk of not betraying out of jealousy when it comes down to it threw a fit because someone decided to no longer associate with her because of the actions she chose. Far before she even faced the problems we see in After Pain Mu chose to be a bully. Then when faced with repercussions for that decision the lightest of repercussion actually-

Being ignored which she states is better than the bullying she faces after her victim's death, "If you’re going to make me the villain it’s ok to ignore me. If it’s endurance, I’m used to it. It’s just having another taste of it." Because this does happen after her victim died. Mu says it's just having another taste of it, so she's already been ignored, and we see in It's Not My Fault that the bullying we saw happen to Mu in After Pain was her victims bullying. So, either Mu's bullying happened after the death of her victim or not at all.

Adding more credence to the claim the murder happened before is her second trial voice line, "Hey...why won't you listen to me...? I'm telling you... Hey...HEY, I'M TALKING TO YOU!" Which is probably the final altercation between her and her victim as Mu gets fed up with being ignored. If this girl or anyone in this school was a threat to Mu why would she talk to anyone like this or even go up to her victim without her friends. She wasn't scared, she was petty and vindictive, which could be forgiven, but she's not a victim and I refuse to validate the mentality she has now.

For all these reasons I said above. However, if others want to fine just don't bother defending that choice to me or pretending to care about what's right.

The reaction to Milgram is just bringing to light again how okay people are with that framing of events and why forms of oppression like that are very unlikely to disappear in any of our lifetimes. The generation below mine can act like they're different from their parents or the ones that came before them but you all lick the same boot. Maybe that's just human nature. It's all the same all the way down.

People are so quick to turn away from information that makes them uncomfortable. To neglect or purposefully avoid learning about the real victims of the heavily fabricated dramatics of white tears. The fact that people are so heavily defending her and vilifying her victim disgusts me to my core. I had to grow up being constantly reminded on the month of my birth the atrocities that happened to people who look like me. I'm done being nice about this.

If you're bending over backwards to defend Mu and highlight her feelings, you are simply a part of a larger societal issue at that point. Mu and Kotoko did the things they did out of spite and for kicks. Hiding behind concepts like victimhood and vigilantism. Kotoko openly states that she believes one does not need to personally experience suffering to understand it's wrong and do something about it.

This is not true this is fundamentally false and antithetical to the understanding of allyship. Kotoko literally said I will speak over victims because I know what's best for them and a bunch of people went go off, you're right fuck them victims! They don't know what's good for them. If they did then they wouldn't have left themselves in a position to be taken advantage of.

Perfectly illustrated in this voice line, "From the beginning I've never asked for your understanding! My actions, one by one, are bringing earth closer to peace. Useless weaklings should just shut up and let me protect them!" Kotoko is flawed because instead of recognizing oppressive systems exist and understanding the lengths people go after living under them for so long, she is quick to blame the victim instead of the system.

In fact, she actively aligns herself with the system. She wants to be part of the system. That's a cop! She even wears like cop street clothing in Harrow! For as much as people joke about cop Kazui- Kotoko is quite literally a cop. She is the type that would happily align herself with a system as long as it gives her a target for her aggression. She literally got power and immediately committed police brutality.

It's easy to go God forbid we let women do anything when you purposefully overlook the multiple atrocities women have directly caused and benefitted from throughout history. Fuck both genders actually and if anyone thinks them being women makes them more forgivable well, well, well have fun being sexist. Also, if you think sexism only affects one gender then you might want to look into that a bit more. Just because it's a Matriarchy instead of Monarchy doesn't make it any better, maybe fairness should be the aim instead of control.

[rrrroyale]

Not that they failed to prepare him. Don't talk to white folks unless they talk to you first. If they do, say"Yes, ma'am" and "No, sir." If you see a white woman coming, you step off the sidewalk. Don't look her in the eye. "If you have to humble yourself; I told him, then just do it. Get on your knees, if you have to."It all seemed so incredible to him. 'Oh, Mama, he said, 'it can't be that bad.'

"It's worse than that, I said."*

She repeated her lessons. In the relatively safe Illinois world he'd grown up in, she'd never had to talk to him about race. He was raised with a sense of confidence and pride. Everything he'd learned all his life had to be unlearned to prepare for the trip. But "how do you give a crash course in hatred to a boy who has only known love?"

It became national, even international news. Writing from Rome, Mississippi's own William Faulkner said, "If we in America have reached that point in our desperate culture when we must murder children, no matter for what reason or what color, we don't deserve to survive, and probably won't." The pressure was on Mississippi to act this time, so Bryant and Milam were locked up in a Delta jail. They confessed to kidnapping Emmett, though they claimed they'd let him go. In preparation for the first time in Mississippi memory that white men would be tried for killing a black boy.

You cannot be tried twice for the same crime in America. Knowing this, Milam and Bryant were happy to take the $4,000 Look magazine offered for their story. It was a lot of money in that place and time. Four months after the trial was over, they confessed what most people knew: they killed Emmett Till. They said they hadn't meant to go that far, "but that boy showed no fear. What else could we do to keep those people in their place?" Rosa Parks said it was the thought of Emmett Till that made her refuse to leave her seat on that bus in Montgomery. You couldn't avoid knowing about it. Unless you lived in the Mississippi Delta, where no one wanted to talk about it for a long, long time.

[whenweallvote]

On this day in 1956: Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, the two white men found not guilty for the 1955 brutal kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till, confessed to the crime in an article published in Look Magazine.

The two men were never brought to justice, even after their written confession. Emmett Till’s life and legacy remain a symbol of the civil rights movement today ✊🏿

[a-southern-reader]

I’m not one to bring up politics that much, but today is an exception. Hoorah, hoorah!!!! The witch is dead, the witch is dead!!! If you don’t know Carolyn Bryant finally died today. If you don’t who that is or why I am glad this woman is dead then let me explain.

Emmett Till was a 14 year old black teen from Chicago that had some family is Money, Mississippi and he went to visit them one summer. While he was there he and some of his cousins went to a store that was being run by Carolyn Bryant. Emmett Till bought some gum and in some of the witnesses testimonies he touched Carolyn’s hand when given her the money, as a black person in Mississippi that was not allowed he was supposed to just put it on the counter. But one thing that is very important in this interaction is that Carolyn stated that Emmett Till “wolf whistled” at her. So later that day Carolyn told her husband and brother about the “incident” and the men kidnapped Emmett from his uncle’s house and lynched him to the point that he was unrecognizable when his body was found in a river. So a trial was held and of course the jury was all white men and the men that committed the murder were smiling because they knew they were getting away with it. Those motherfuckers brought cigars to celebrate after the trial!!!

So that whole wolf whistle thing earlier that I said was important, well decades later in 2007!!!!! That bitch admitted she lied about Emmett Till whistling at her and that he made physical advances to her.

As a Mississippian I grew up my whole life learning about that tragedy every year in school and in college. It sickens me that woman never received a punishment for murdering a 14 year old kid. So yeah, I’m celebrating her death today, even smoking a cigar in celebration.

Rot in Hell Carolyn Bryant!!

[petervintonjr]

"That is, after all, how it works. We don't come here with hatred in our hearts. We have to be taught to feel that way. We have to want to be that way, to please the people who teach us to want to be like them. Strange, to think that people might learn to hate as a way of getting some approval, some acceptance, some love. I thought about all that."

Double biography today. And even a cursory glance at this weekend's headlines will make fairly obvious why I chose to talk about these two people.

Born in 1941 Chicago, Emmett Till was 14 years old when, on August 24, 1955, he was kidnapped and tortured to death by a white mob in Money, Mississippi for the never-proven "crime" of flirting with a white woman. His mutilated body was retrieved from the Tallahatchie River three days later. His mother, Mamie Till-Bradley, made the agonizing decision for her son's bloated, mutilated body to be displayed in an open casket funeral at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, in Chicago. Thousands of people lined up to view the body and more than 50,000 mourners attended the funeral service. The resultant media coverage threw a spotlight on extrajudicial lynchings in the U.S., and forced a greater public discourse on segregation, racial violence, and systemic inequality.

In September of that year Till's accused murderers were ultimately acquitted by an all-white, all-male jury after only 67 minutes' deliberation. Four months later the accused murderers openly admitted to the crime to journalist William Bradford Huie, in an article that would then appear in the Jan. 24, 1956 edition of Look magazine. This article's publication was in many respects a clarion call to justice for many grassroots and local activists, kickstarting the Modern Civil Rights Movement.

Mamie Till-Bradley continued to advocate for social and racial justice for the rest of her life, never passing up an opportunity to educate about the circumstances of her son's murder right on up until her death in 2003. While Till's story remains a part of the American public consciousness (even directly informing the underlying plot of Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird), the details tend to become lost to time --glossed over, sanitized. Of late this has been notably mitigated, with 2022's airing of the miniseries Women of the Movement on ABC, featuring Adrienne Warren as Mamie Till-Bradley. In March of 2022, President Joe Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, and this past October the feature film Till premiered in theaters, directed by Chinonye Chukwu and starring Danielle Deadwyler as Mamie Till-Bradley. One attendee at the notorious 1955 trial was future State Sen. David Jordan (D-Greenwood), who successfully sponsored the commissioning of a bronze statue of Emmett Till, unveiled in October of 2022 at Rail Spike Park.

(Read "What Emmett Till's Mother Taught Me About Grief and Justice" by Sybrina Fulton, mother of Trayvon Martin.)

Bottom line here: Emmett Till's story has pointedly NOT vanished into invisibility and obscurity, unlike a great many other lynchings and massacres. But the larger issue is more primal: Emmett Till should still be alive, today --he should be comfortably just into his eighties, possibly enjoying the company of grandchildren. And to pull that very same thread, Amadou Diallo should still be alive; Trayvon Martin should still be alive; Breonna Taylor should still be alive --they should all be into their late-twenties, possibly settling into a career, perhaps starting families of their own.

Tyre Nichols should still be alive.

Incidentally, these biographies all now have a permanent home, rather than subject themselves to arbitrary throttling-down at the murky whims of various social media. Safer and more sensible that way, especially since so many states (mine included, unfortunately) have redoubled their efforts to ensure that this subject matter stays out of school curricula. New to this series? Go here to start the lessons: http://www.petervintonjr.com/blm/start.html

Black History Month kicking off in a few more days, my friends. More biographies and accompanying art, still to come. I feel as though I keep repeating this, but: we've a lot still to learn. So go study.

[fmhiphop]

Carolyn Bryant, The Woman Behind The Lynching Of Emmett Till, Has Died

In in the late summer of 1955, the mutilated body of 14-year-old Emmett Louis Till was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. This came after the boy was taken from his great uncle Moses Wright's home several nights before by white men intending to lynch him. To understand why he was killed, we must examine the cause. And it all began with a woman by the name of Carolyn Bryant, also known as Carolyn Bryant Donham. Emmett Till was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 25, 1941.  Till was sent to visit relatives down south in August 1955. During his stay, he was accused of whistling at a then-21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. She would later admit to lying. However, at that time, even being accused of speaking or looking at white people in the “wrong way,” resulted in harassment or worse—death. Unfortunately, Till was a victim of these social rules. On the night of August 28th, members of Emmett's family saw him taken by Roy Bryant and JW Milam. During the time he was missing, he was beaten, shot in the head, then tied to a metal fan with barbed wire, and tossed into the river. The next day, they were arrested and two days later, Till was discovered. According to many historians, these events would later spark the start of the Civil Rights Movement. Direct Aftermath On September 3, Mamie Till Mobley, Emmett's mother, held an open-casket funeral purposely to expose the horrors of lynching. Thousands of people came to see the body. Millions of people also saw Till's bludgeoned face on the cover of Jet Magazine. A grand jury indicted Milam and Bryant following Till's burial. Later that month, Jet magazine and The Chicago Defender published photos of Emmett's body. The trial began. Mamie flew in to attend. During these legal proceedings, Moses Wright stood and pointed at the defendants, confirming their presence at the scene of the crime. An action that took a lot of bravery given the time period and setting. On September 23, a jury of all white men acquitted Emmett's killers. They deliberated for only 67 minutes. Multiple Europeans publications covered the trials. In November, the pair are officially free after a jury refuses to indict them on kidnapping charges. A January 1956 issue of Look Magazine published Milam and Bryant's confessions to the murder. For their crimes, the pair received a reported $4,000. In 2008, Bryant penned a memoir titled,  I Am More Than A Wolf Whistle. The book was set to be released after Bryant's death in 2036, but details of the memoir was leaked by author Timothy Tyson after he interviewed her. The entire thing became accessible to the public in 2022. In the books, she claims she was grabbed by Till, but in the interview with Tyson, she took back the statement saying she made it up. In fact, over the last 60 years, she's changed her story many times. Generational Impact And Trauma In 2022, a grand jury, nearly 70 years after the fact, decided to indict Bryant. However, after seven hours of deliberation, the jury found there wasn't enough evidence to indict Bryant on kidnapping and manslaughter charges, further salting the wounds of many Black Americans. In an interview just a few days ago with Till's cousin and best friend , Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. said now that Bryant is gone, all hopes of accountability are off the table. Even though no one now will be held to account for the death of my cousin and best friend, it is up to all of us to be accountable to the challenges we still face in overcoming racial injustice. Decades later, Black people are still being lynched by so-called vigilantes and police officers. In addition, , they are being subjected to inhumane treatment via mass incarceration and stop-and-frisk laws. Naturally, Bryant's passing has made many people emotional. Some people are expressing sorrow over Emmett's short life, while some are celebrating Bryant's death. And though most parties involved in the case are all gone now, the tragedy and injustice is still felt among the different generations of Black Americans. Written by Kimberly Stelly | Letterboxd | Instagram | Twitter Follow and like FMHipHop on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Spotify! Read the full article

[movementlike4river]

Black August: Rest in Power Ruchell Magee 🖤

a year ago ruchell magee was released from prison, he died months after on oct 17th 2023. this is his story:

"Ruchell Magee was born an only child on March 17, 1939 in the small town of Franklinton, Louisiana. Across the Deep South, Jim Crow laws, white supremacist lynchings, KKK terror, segregation, and legal bias against Black people were common. In 1955, at the young age of 16, Ruchell was accused of aggravated attempted rape due to his relationship with a white girl in KKK territory. For context, Emmett Till was lynched, mutilated, and murdered in August 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Magee was given a completely bogus trial with an all-white jury who sentenced him to eight hard years in the notorious Angola State Prison, a former plantation. In 1962, the state deprived him of his inherited property and ordered that he leave Louisiana and go to Los Angeles.

Ruchell was finally allowed to leave Louisiana’s dungeons in 1963, so he headed to Los Angeles for a fresh start. Only six months later, Ruchell and his cousin Leroy were arrested as they sat with a man named Ben Brown in Brown’s car. Brown told police a far-fetched tale that Ruchell and his cousin had kidnapped him in a dispute over a $10 bag of weed, even though the cousins didn’t even have the car keys.

As the police arrested him, they beat him so badly that he had to be hospitalized for three days, but the injustices were only beginning. The racist Superior Court of Los Angeles County railroaded him with the trumped-up charge of kidnapping to commit robbery. There was extreme malpractice from both the prosecutor and the defense attorney, which came to a head with Magee’s lawyer pleading him guilty without his consent. Ruchell was unjustly imprisoned with a seven-years-to-life charge for this alleged crime. 

Ruchell strived to develop his mind in prison, where he learned the rich traditions of African history and liberation struggles. He took on the name “Cinque” because he felt a connection with the African freedom fighter Cinqué, who led a rebellion on the slave ship La Amistad. Magee won himself a second trial by pointing out that his indictment was improperly joined with his cousin’s case (among other improper acts). In 1965, Magee unfortunately faced the same judge that bound and gagged him in the first trial for making lawful objections. In Ruchell’s own words, the second trial “used fraud to hide fraud”, upholding the conviction and shooting his trial down.

Magee had gained a reputation in the prison system as a people’s lawyer by doing work like filing a lawsuit for the wrongful death of prisoner Fred Billingsley, who was beaten and tear-gassed to death in his cell in the San Quentin prison in February 1970. Ruchell’s work helped lead to a large settlement for the Billingsley family.

After seven years of torture in California’s prison system, he took an opportunity for freedom when it came to him. On August 7, 1970, Ruchell Magee and William Christmas were among the witnesses for the trial of James McClain, who was on trial for assaulting a guard after the brutal Billingsley murder. Jonathan Jackson, the younger brother of prisoner and Black Panther Party Field Marshal George Jackson, attempted to free his brother and the rest of the Soledad Brothers by taking control of the courtroom in Marin County Courthouse. Jonathan announced that he was taking over and offered weapons to Magee, Christmas, and McClain. Even though he wasn’t aware of the plan at its start, he knew that this could be his last chance to escape slavery and get the world’s attention on his unjust conviction. The prison guards opened fire on the group as they left the building, killing Jackson, Christmas, McClain, and a judge and critically wounding Ruchell and a prosecutor.

Ruchell fought for his liberation while simultaneously fighting to expose the corrupt judicial system. He would have never been in the Marin County Courthouse courtroom if he received a fair trial in his 1963 case. Even throughout decades of abuses and injustices, Ruchell continuously offered his support as a people’s lawyer for other prisoners.

Ruchell urgently needs public support in 2023, especially because of his factual innocence, his age of 84 years old, and the risk of COVID-19 in California’s wretched prisons. He currently has two motions in the legal system - a request to Governor Gavin Newsom for commutation in California and a hearing in the Supreme Court. Ruchell is scheduled for a parole suitability hearing in July 2021, where he has the possibility of getting parole. 

In Ruchell’s own words, “Slavery 400 years ago, slavery today. It’s the same but with a new name.” Whether it was Africans fighting captivity in Africa, or Africans fighting captivity in California, oppressed people have the right to rebel! Free Ruchell “Cinque” Magee!

Freed Political Prisoner"

[allyear-lff]

Till

The writeup you see below was done in January 2023 shortly after I watched the film which left such an impression on me that I wanted to make sure I made justice to it within my limited means.

I truly believed that Ms Deadwyler was a certainty for an Oscar nod, how wrong I was.

Mark Kermode discussed this iniquity in his film review podcast with Simon Mayo, worth listening to them about this (their podcast can de downloaded from anywhere): https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/danielle-deadwyler-women-talking-epic-tails-blue-jean/id1616559297?i=1000598917215

Before talking about the film absorb this bit of information, perhaps read it and then go for a coffee, a walk even, think about it and come back here if you wish: the Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching an US federal hate crime.[1], this law was enacted in .... 2022.

Summary: film based on real events, probably quite closely, commemorating the life and work of Mamie Till (later Till-Mobley) and the unspeakable tragedy that forced her into the limelight.

Plot with spoilers:

The film is about the enormity of a civilised country allowing the inhumanity we witness to happen, unashamed for the best part of the 20th century of human beings being violently murdered without any possibility of redress, a country and establishment entirely unconcerned of the murder of a young boy in the most savage manner as a payback for a bit of well intended silliness.

The film is the stuff of nightmares, I would have no hesitation to describe the first half of the film as part of the horror genre.

This is 1955 Chicago, Emmet, known as Bo, is a jovial happy African American boy who lives with her loving mother, Mamie, surrounded by loving relatives and friends, his dad died in the last months of WWII, a hero, his family comes from Mississippi and he goes visiting relatives there at the suggestion of his grandmother, played by none other than Whopi Goldberg.

Mamie has misgivings about the visit since Bo has grown in a more tolerant environment (the low level racism is still there mind you, there is a short scene to remind us of that), he doesn't know how to engage with people prepared to murder him at the drop of a hat (who could have?).

Bo goes away, once there he is prancing around with his cousins, they go to a grocery shop and what he intended as a compliment (he says to the shop attendant, a White woman, that she looks like a Hollywood star) is taken as an insult which is compounded by him whistling at the woman, when she reacts angrily the black youngsters disperse but offence has been taken, the boys keep things to themselves but little did they know that the family of the Woman would react with unimaginable rage.

A few days later, when Bo is getting ready to go back to Chicago, a group of men come to the home of his relatives and get him out of bed and into a truck, mercifully we aren't shown much of what happens to him but we are in no doubt about what is coming, in the meantime Mamie misses Bo terribly and wants him back, she is in this state of mind when news of Bo's disappearance reach her, she is desperate to rush to Mississippi but she is convinced to use the help of activists since this kind of kidnappings are very common and they know how to apply pressure to the system.

Mamie and the people helping are embroiled in all this when the news finally arrive that Bo's body has been found, the authorities in Mississippi want to bury Bo there, but Mamie is having none of it and by the simple strength of her moral position forces the activists to move all their influence to bring Bo back home, which they manage to do.

On arrival of the body to Chicago Marnie receives it in very moving scenes of unimaginable sorrow, later on Mamie is shown the body which is horribly disfigured, I thought this wouldn't be shown, but the camera moves deftly and all of the sudden we can see the left side of Bo's horribly disfigured remains, this by the way is not imagined, in real life Mamie asked a photographer to take pictures of her disfigured son and of her and her then boyfriend standing in front of the body, I don't understand why this picture isn't iconic, it has a visceral power similar to that of the Vietnamese girl escaping a Napalm bombardment.

From this point the film endeavours to document the transformation of Mamie from grieving mother into Civil Rights Activist, starting with attending as a witness the trial of the murderers of her son (they would later confirm the murder in a paid interview years later, protected by the inane US double jeopardy laws ). Predictably these subhumans walked free.

How somebody can manage to find the courage to lead and to become an icon after such sorrow and pain is impossible to fathom, I am shocked that good people, any people, had to endure this, and even more shocked about all the people that to this day haven't done something to redress this shameful balance.

This is a film whose relevance as a document, homage and reminder is far more important than the technical aspects of it, the film is impeccably ambiented in the 1950s, several photographs around the death of Bo have been recreated with great success in the film, the acting is fantastic, Mamie is played with great dignity and empathy by Danielle Deadwyler who is not a newcomer, but who should see her star raising after this great role. Oscar node perhaps? I hope people don't forget about her, she has been nominated for a BAFTA, and deservedly so, but given the vagaries of these things the film may not be eligible for the Oscars until 2024.

Rating: 4.5/5

78 of 168

Date: 11 January 2023

Venue: Barbican Cinemas

The list of films in the LFF 2022