On Nov. 17, 2014, as these protests spread across the country, a former chair of SNCC stood in the rain on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol with a shovel. In an orchard of umbrellas Rep. John Lewis (pictured here) helped plant an American sycamore in honor of a 14-year-old boy from Chicago who was murdered almost 60 years earlier. In his 1998 memoir, Lewis writes that when he was 15, “and at the edge of my own manhood just like him,” he had been “shaken to the core” by the lynching of Emmett Till. Among those wielding shovels with Lewis were both U.S. senators from Mississippi and Eric Holder (seen behind Lewis in photo), the first African American U.S. attorney general.
“Even today, the pain from this unspeakable crime, this unspeakable tragedy, still feels raw,” Holder declared, but the tree would become Emmett Till’s “living memorial, here at the heart of our Republic, in the shadow of the United States Capitol.”
Till perished senselessly and far too soon, the attorney general said, but “it can never be said that he died in vain. His tragic murder galvanized millions to action.” After Holder spoke, reporters asked him about the relationship between Emmett Till and the contemporary racial conflagrations in Ferguson and elsewhere. “The struggle goes on,” replied Holder. “There is an enduring legacy that Emmett Till has left us with that we still have to confront as a nation.”
Decades after his death Emmett continues to be a national metaphor for our racial nightmares. And difficult though it is to bear, his story can leave us reaching for our better angels and moving toward higher ground. By suffering comes wisdom, the ancient Greeks tell us, and Mamie Bradley’s decision to take history in her hands and help build a movement distills that harder wisdom and leaves it in our own. “The struggle of humanity against power,” writes Milan Kundera, “is always the struggle of memory against forgetting.”
ABOUT THE STORY
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was visiting family in Mississippi when Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam abducted, beat and shot him for allegedly whistling at Bryant’s wife, Carolyn, who now admits it never happened. Then his body was dumped in the Tallahatchie River. The men were acquitted but later confessed to a Look magazine reporter. Outrage over the incident fueled the civil rights movement and continues to fuel the fight for racial equality today. This excerpt from Tyson’s book examines the teenager’s enduring legacy.
Suzanne Van Atten
Personal Journeys editor
personaljourneys@ajc.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Timothy B. Tyson is senior research scholar at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, visiting professor of American Christianity and Southern culture at Duke Divinity School and adjunct professor of American studies at the University of North Carolina. He is the author of “Blood Done Sign My Name,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and “Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power.” He serves on the executive board of the North Carolina NAACP and the UNC Center for Civil Rights.
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