Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till:We are doomed to repeat the past

[Joe the Revelator]

Both young black males killed due to their race in the dirty south, one for whistling at a white woman, the other for walking around a neighborhood while black.

Both were visiting relatives.

At least with Emmett Till, his killers were arrested ( and quickly aquitted)

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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This is an interview with Till's cousin:

In 1955, Emmett Till—a 14-year-old African-American visiting Mississippi from Chicago—was murdered after whistling at a white woman. His mother insisted that her son be displayed in a glass-topped casket, so the world could see his beaten body. Till’s murder became a rallying point for the civil rights movement, and his family recently donated the casket in which he was buried to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. Till’s cousin Simeon Wright, 67, who was with him the night he was kidnapped and murdered, spoke with the magazine’s Abby Callard.

What was Emmett like?
He loved to tell jokes and loved for people to tell him jokes. In school, he might pull the fire alarm just to get out of class. To him that would be funny. We found out that what was dangerous to us was funny to him. He really had no sense of danger.

What happened at the store between Emmett and Carolyn Bryant has been debated, what do you remember happening?
We went to the store that night. My nephew that came down from Chicago with Emmett went into the store first, and Emmett went in the store after him. So Wheeler came out, and Maurice sent me inside the store to be with him to make sure he didn’t say anything out of line. There was about less than a minute that he was in there by himself. During that time I don’t know what he said, but when I was in there, he said nothing to her. He didn’t have time, she was behind the counter, so he didn’t put his arms around her or anything like that. While I was in there he said nothing. But, after we left the store, we both walked out together, she came outside going to her car. As she was going to her car, he did whistle at her. That’s what scared her so bad. The only thing that I saw him do was that he did whistle.

Because he was from Chicago, do you think Emmett’s unfamiliarity with the South during the Jim Crow era contributed to what happened?
It could have been the reason he did it, because he was warned not to do anything like that, how he was supposed to act. I think what he did was trying to impress us. He said, “You guys might be afraid to do something like this, but not me.” Another thing. He really didn’t know the danger. He had no idea how dangerous that was; because when he saw our reaction, he got scared too.

You were in the same bed as Emmett when the two men came for him, right?
Yes, when they came that night, that Sunday morning, he and I were in the same bed. I was the first one to wake up because I heard the noise and the loud talking. The men made me lie back down and ordered Emmett to get up and put his clothes on. During that time, I had no idea what was going on. Pretty soon, my mother came in there pleading with them not to take Emmett. At that point, she offered them money. One of the men, Roy Bryant, he kind of hesitated at the idea but J.W. Milam, he was a mean guy. He was the guy with the gun and the flashlight, he wouldn’t hear of it. He continued to have Emmett put his clothes on. Then, after Emmett was dressed, they marched him out of the house into a truck that was waiting outside. When they got out to the truck, they asked the person inside the truck, “Was this the right boy.” A lady’s voice responded that it was.

You attended the trial. Were you at all surprised that the murderers were acquitted?
I was shocked. I was expecting a verdict of guilty. I’m still shocked. I believe sincerely that if they had convicted those men 54 years ago that Emmett’s story wouldn’t have been in the headlines. We’d have forgotten about it by now.


http://adiama.com/ancestralconnections/2009/11/09/emmett-tills-casket-goes-to-the-smithsonian/

[Joe the Revelator]

1. Striking

[varelse]

5. They were both beautiful kids (nt)

[cali]

6. except that they were both young and black and had short hair

there's little resemblance.

[Hoyt]

2. Damn, just Damn.

[Joe the Revelator]

4. Right?

[niyad]

3. k and r

[RZM]

7. I'm a little troubled by this comparison getting tossed around willy-nilly

I believe it does a disservice to Till's memory and misrepresents what really went down in Sanford.

First off, Florida in 2012 is a long way from Mississippi in 1955. While some legacies do remain, what happened in Sanford really could have happened anywhere in the country. The Till case was very much a product of the pre-Civil rights deep south.

Second, the crimes are hardly comparable. Till's killers seized him from the home where he was staying, murdered him in cold blood, and dumped his body. That's quite different from what Zimmerman did. I don't think Zimmerman's initial intention was to kill Trayvon. I think it was to determine what he was doing in the neighborhood. Zimmerman was in the wrong there - it's not his business what Trayvon was doing. While I wasn't there, I believe the fact that Zimmerman approached Trayvon and (probably) the way in which he engaged him sparked a fight. In the course of the fight, Zimmerman produced his gun and shot the young man. That's my theory anyway.

I'm no lawyer and certainly not an expert on SYG. But it sounds to me like what Zimmerman did was a crime - manslaughter at the very least. But it's a far cry from what Till's killers did.

I don't see a need to bring up some of the worst crimes in history as if they are always so relevant to contemporary events. We should remember the past and honor Till's legacy. But I'm leery of trotting it out in instances like this, where I'm not sure it's all that relevant.

A better analogy would probably be a case where the circumstances were more similar. I'm sure they are out there (overzealous, armed homeowner/renter shoots young black man out of paranoia). Or perhaps a case of the police shooting an unarmed black man by mistake, which has happened plenty of times as well.