President Joe Biden was 12 years old in 1955 when Emmett Till was kidnapped, tortured, shot, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River, in Mississippi. Till's murder sparked the modern Civil Rights Movement. This week, Biden signed a proclamation to create three federal monuments to honor the martyred boy and his mother-turned-activist Mamie Till-Mobley. Biden's proclamation comes at a time when American racial justice is mired in a dance of two steps forward, one step back.
The country is divided. And race, once again, is the battlefield. In a step backward, Florida passed legislation for its public school curriculum which would mask the barbaric cruelty and insidious greed of slavery. Instead of learning from the travesty of human bondage, slavery deniers would have school children believe forced African labor was a training program. Other states will surely follow this path, covering the shame of American history with whitewashed legislation. Conservatives, like Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), are making it illegal to teach the unvarnished truth about Emmett Till and America's history of racial oppression.
Two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, were responsible for murdering Till. Then, as now, few white murderers have been tried for crimes against people of color. Despite the evidence, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by an all-white male jury. They later gave interviews describing how they murdered Till, knowing double jeopardy laws protected them from being tried again for their crimes.
Milam and Bryant may have thought the incident would go away. But Mamie Till-Mobley refused to let the world turn its back on the murder of her only child. She said, "Let the world see," and held a funeral with an open casket. Over 125,000 attendees saw what Milam and Bryant had done to a boy falsely accused of touching Carolyn Bryant, the wife of Roy Bryant, in a country store in Money, Mississippi. Carolyn Bryant recently died without ever being brought to justice for her involvement in Till's lynching.
It is this reality about racial injustice that conservatives seek to hide. Book ban groups are history deniers, no less lethal than the Holocaust deniers. They refuse to allow the truth of American history to be distributed. But the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. said, "truth crushed to the earth will rise again." Racial injustice will be revealed. We must keep pushing forward.
There are lawsuits challenging book bans. The number of Black truthtellers—writers, students, activists, educators, filmmakers, attorneys, and poets—will not allow justice to be denied. Oppressed people have always been creative. If school boards will not allow libraries to place the truth on their shelves, the internet will provide the platform. This is a step forward.
The world watched the murder of George Floyd in May 2020. Since then, we have gone backward. Like Till's open casket, Floyd's murder by asphyxiation on a Minneapolis street was displayed on social media. International protests led to the rare trial of a white police officer for the murder of a Black civilian. The conviction of former officer Derek Chauvin, along with his fellow officers who stood by as Floyd was lynched, was a step forward. However, other deaths at the hands of police failed to result in indictments or trials in other such incidents.
Racial justice resolutions were made after Floyd's death. The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act was drafted. After two hundred years of false starts and more than 4,000 brutal deaths of men, women and children, including human beings burned alive, the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Law was passed. Emmett Till's name was given to the Anti-Lynching Law, but it has yet to be enforced, despite recent mass killings of people of color. Anti-racism resolutions drafted after Floyd's murder are being repealed, diversity efforts disbanded. American history is being whitewashed of its sins by conservative state legislators, radical school board members, and racism deniers in Congress nostalgic for white male patriarchy.
Biden's proclamation is a step forward. It will recognize what the murder of Emmett Till meant and continues to mean to this country. The Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monuments will be near the Tallahatchie River at Grabal Landing, outside of the courthouse in Sumner, Mississippi, and at Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, in Chicago, where Till's funeral was held. Federal recognition may help protect these sites from desecration as previous signs were defaced, shot, and torn down.
Rosa Parks said Till's murder gave her the courage to refuse to relinquish her seat on the bus to a white man. That was in segregated Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. Today, legal segregation no longer exists. Kamala Harris, who is Black and Asian, is vice president of the United States. Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson, who is Black, sits on the U.S. Supreme Court. There is progress. But President Biden also said, hate never dies. It simply hides under a rock, waiting to take the country one step backward.
A grieving Mamie Till-Mobley chose to push forward. Without forward motion, we will only go backwards. Each step toward acknowledging America's painful history is healing and necessary. But our continued progress requires vigilance.
Gloria J. Browne-Marshall is a professor of constitutional law at John Jay College (CUNY). She is the author of "She Took Justice: The Black Woman, Law, and Power," the stage-play "Dreams of Emmett Till," and hosts the animated series "Your Democracy." Her upcoming book is titled "A Protest History of the United States."
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
