It has been an important year for the memory and impact of Emmett Till’s life and terrible death. That alone shows how slow justice can be for people of color in America.
In January, 67 years after he was murdered by white supremacists in Mississippi, Till was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor that Congress bestows. Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, was also honored posthumously. She died in 2003. Her insistence on an open casket at her son’s funeral in 1955 showed the public not only the brutality inflicted on her son, but the wickedness of the ideology that caused it. Till was abducted, tortured and killed after allegedly whistling at a white woman in Leflore County. He was 14. His murder was a watershed moment for the civil rights movement. In the long, sad list of Black men whose unjust killing has inspired change in this country, Till’s name is near the top.
On June 29, we got more Till news. A search of the basement at the Leflore County courthouse turned up an unserved warrant for the white woman offended by Till’s alleged whistle — Carolyn Bryant Donham, identified as Mrs. Roy Bryant in the warrant.
