In 1955, Emmett Till was visiting family in Mississippi when he was brutally tortured and murdered because he supposedly grabbed Carolyn Bryant, a 21 year-old white woman, and then made sexually crude remarks. The world would later find out from Bryant, after more than 60 years of silence, that Emmett did no such thing. When his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, finally saw Emmett’s disfigured and barely recognizable body, she refused to be silenced by those who wanted her to grieve momentarily and then get on with her life. She openly wept, made it possible for journalists to take pictures of his disfigured body, and before Emmett’s funeral, she allowed tens of thousands of mourners to visit the funeral home and see with their own eyes what racism did to her boy.
Jesse Jackson referred to Emmett Till’s murder as the “big bang” of the civil rights movement. Till’s name was heard round the world. Likewise, attorney Ben Crump referenced Emmitt Till when he said, “Never forget this injustice.” Later, Crump would describe George Floyd’s death, captured on TV with a knee on his neck, as an emerging “tipping point” for America and the world.
For almost five decades, Emmett’s mom pushed for change and resistance by going back to school, teaching, and sharing Emmett’s story time and time again; sensing that it would challenge the nation and transform the civil rights movement. In the words of Momma Mobley, “My burning thing, the thing that comes out of Emmett’s death is to learn until your head swells.”
George’s Floyd’s murder and the searing video that implicated Derek Chauvin are challenging our nation at the present. Some rightfully wonder, “What now?” Years ago, Mama Mobley said, “The work is not done.” “So many of our young people still need so much guidance. There is much they don’t know and we must take responsibility for that…There is still much that needs to be done to educate white people, too.”
Relentless learning, whether it takes place at places of worship, at schools, on the job and at home, or in likely and unlikely settings in our community, can help us answer the question that is now being repeatedly asked after Derek Chauvin’s conviction. The question is simply, where do we go from here? While there’s no consensus in terms of our answer to this question, a good place to start is educating ourselves and each other ’til our head swells; to keep the horror that cut short two precious lives from happening again and again.
Links to more from Dr. Bucher:
Buy A MOMMY, A DADDY, TWO SISTERS AND A JIMMY: AUTISM AND THE DIFFERENCE IT MAKES at Amazon.com