The blood of Emmett Till remains fresh, 64 years after his murder. Last week, a photo surfaced depicting three Ole Miss fraternity students holding guns in front of a bullet-riddled memorial to Till’s execution by torture in 1955.
One of the young men posted the photo on Instagram last March, receiving 274 likes. Not one person condemned their behavior, until months later when the national fraternity received notification of the offensive photo and suspended the students.
Till had visited Mississippi relatives as a 14-year-old, when he whistled or flirted with a young white lady at a local grocery. This “offense” prompted the lady’s husband and brother-in-law to break into Till’s home, beat him, tie barbed wire and a cotton gin fan around his neck, and throw him to the bottom of the Tallahatchie River.
Fifty-five years later, white people are defacing the memorial marker (the sign has been destroyed 3 times) and hundreds of white youth are mocking the shameful hate crime.
I am disgusted, appalled, sickened, angry, and deeply sad for my state. This was no random act by a few drunken frat boys. These three youth represent a sizable portion of young white Mississippians who despise people of color. Till, they think, got what he deserved. Remember, only a few years ago, Ole Miss students hung a noose around the campus statue of James Meredith, the first black student to enroll at the university. Wake up Mississippi! If we want to eradicate racism, we must condemn hate with loud voices, not quiet whispers of dismay. We all must set good examples for our children at their early ages.
Those three frat members need someone in their peer group to tell them to cut out the racist talk and behavior. Until more of us say, “Enough!”, Mississippi will continue to cultivate 21st-century ignorant rednecks. “Salt Life” T-shirts with Costa shades and a mesh ball cap should not be the equivalent of white robes and hoods. That era, a cancer on all of us, is over!
We have too many other problems to solve in our poor state. Stand up to hate, call it out when you see or hear it, and tell your kids over and over and over, that prejudice is not tolerated.
Emmett Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white male jury, after which the killers openly bragged about their crime. Why would anyone today, even jokingly, glorify Mississippi’s history of mob rule? Perhaps because history is quickly forgotten, supplanted by daily flashes of social media garbage.
Emmett Till’s violent death is a stain on all of us. His blood has not been washed away. It pulses and flows over generations and through every fabric and fiber of our 82 county society.
Remember and respect his loss of life and reject any act or statement which attempts to diminish or belittle his murder.
Clark Hicks is a lawyer who lives in Hattiesburg. His e-mail is clark@hicksattorneys.com.
