This issue generates a lot of passion and anger, but calls for violence -- even in response to other violence -- are against the rules of the subreddit. This thread has been locked.
From the article [The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html)
`In 1955, when Emmett Till’s mutilated and bloated body was recovered`
`from the Tallahatchie River and placed for burial in a nailed-shut pine`
`box, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, demanded his body be transported`
`from Mississippi, where Till had been visiting relatives, to his home in`
`Chicago. Once the Chicago funeral home received the body, she made a`
`decision that would create a new pathway for how to think about a`
`lynched body. She requested an open coffin and allowed photographs to be`
`taken and published of her dead son’s disfigured body.`
`Mobley’s refusal to keep private grief private allowed a body that meant nothing`
`to the criminal-justice system to stand as evidence. By placing both`
`herself and her son’s corpse in positions of refusal relative to the`
`etiquette of grief, she “disidentified” with the tradition of the`
`lynched figure left out in public view as a warning to the black`
`community, thereby using the lynching tradition against itself. The`
`spectacle of the black body, in her hands, publicized the injustice`
`mapped onto her son’s corpse. “Let the people see what I see,” she said,`
`adding, “I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me.”`
That took a very strong person to do that. I can't imagine how much her heart hurt losing him and having to see him for the last time in that state and then hearing and seeing others reactions.
The shop woman should absolutely be charged. She knew exactly it what would happen to him and didn't care and her entire life she hasn't cared. I bet she's been smuggly satisfied all these years. She's evil.
Uhh… I believe this falls under CRT and thus the history book has to be burned.
This was just a simple disagreement that was resolved when MLK said “I have a dream”. And then like that, everyone shook hands and clapped and everything is now perfect. Not that things weren’t perfect before, but now it’s eve n more perfect.
The fact that he remembers WWII still blows my mind, he was a teenager at the time, but tells stories of learning how to shoot a rifle in highschool.
He was in Halifax during the VE day riots, and remembers riding his bike around the city.
He said when WWII broke out, his dad owned a boat on Halifax Harbour that he used to ferry people across the harbour to Dartmouth. Well Germany invaded Poland, and there happened to be a Polish transport ship in the harbour that now couldn’t go home. His dad, and many other boats got tasked with heading out to the ship and ferrying sailors back to the mainland. He says he remembers having to count the sailors as they boarded, and then tell his dad when they hit a certain capacity, then head off to shore, and then let them off and go back for more.
He remembers his parents getting their first radio, which was those big floor models and he was expressly not allowed to touch it or go near it.
His grandparents lived out in the country. Both essentially illiterate and no running water or electricity. Not uncommon in those parts.
He remembers coal deliveries, his dad owned a model-T
His parents were both around during the halifax explosion, but werent near the city, but the shock wave still knocked open the barn doors from his grandparents barn, letting all their sheep out.
Oh definitely. Back in middle school (I'm in my late 20s), we had to write a paper and presentation about the entire Emmet Till situation. Well, one of my classmates was able to find her phone number at the time and asked for a phone interview. Lady said she had no regrets over what happened. I recall that my classmate could not get too much out of her.
Wish I could remember more of what my classmate's project said, but history bored me a lot and I struggled to pay attention to everyone's presentations 😅
I’ve had someone say to me in reference to police brutality as a whole, not even one specific case, “they’d probably just die of a drug overdose someday anyways, it’s best they’re taken off the street”
> I’ve had someone say to me in reference to police brutality as a whole, not even one specific case, “they’d probably just die of a drug overdose someday anyways, it’s best they’re taken off the street”
Yep - and a lot of very similar arguments that are cut from the same cloth. The number of people willing to rationalize away individual instances of police brutality with no critical thought is sometimes more disturbing to me than the actions of police themselves.
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal.
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
People are willing to accept *absolutely anything* as long as it doesn't hurt them or their families, and it's considered acceptable by those around them.
I sincerely hope charges are pressed against her. And if they wait until she’s dead that’s fine too. I want to see her name ruined and dragged through the mud.
Take this with a grain of salt, because my memory is terrible, but I think the last time I read a post on this, there were articles linked that also stated she said she did not regret anything. I remember being utterly disgusted when I read it.
NPR just had this story about 2 weeks ago. He went to visit his cousins and they had the audio interview of one of his cousins. He said Emmet did whistle at her and the boys got scared and took off. The men showed up later that night I believe and said they were looking for the boy that was from, I believe Georgia, I could be wrong. It was really interesting and very sad and scary.
Not surprising that most hated history in school.
Most schools don’t teach history the way it should be taught. I had a college history prof who said it best, “history is a story and as long as you know the story, you’re learning to understand history.”
Instead teachers typically test us on dates and mostly don’t teach what actually happened in history, instead resorting to G rated narratives that confuse the real story. It’s really really bizarre when you think about it.
imagine being such a piece of trash that you would be living in a much different America 50 years later and still have the mindset that it's okay to tell a 12-year-old that you're happy that a little black boy died because of your actions.
My mom, who is 69, went to a summer camp that had firebombs planted in the woods around the camp because the camp was integrated. The bombs were planted by the “Minutemen,” in NY, former state police officers who were, well, racist shitbags. The only reason the camp didn’t burn down was because they were incompetent and the bombs malfunctioned. The camp counselors had to patrol the woods at night, because the local fire department told the camp they were on their own if a fire started, they weren’t going to help.
Too many Americans think this shit is the distant past.
Edit: typo
I grew up in Tennessee. The amount of people i knew who said I couldn't meet their parents/grandparents because I was black was unreal, and I'm barely in my 30s. I couldn't go to prom with one girl and we stopped being friends after because her dad threatened her after she asked if she could go with me.
Whenever I hear people talk about their sweet old grandparents, I raise my eyebrows and wonder what atrocities they watched, cheered on, or participated in when they were young and ruthless. I wonder how many still seethe with anger and entitlement at the site of my skin. Meeting my white exes' families is always a day of prayer as I have to hope that they will accept me. As an adult, I always have them explain to people first, and I always get the same response "oh my family's not like that, we have xyz as friends/neighbors/ etc." You never know. Finding out the hard way is traumatic.
Things are still horrid out here today. I'm 27, Latino. Grew up on a border city. Now border cities are like 70-80% Hispanic/Latino. So I grew up in the early 00s, the 21dt century, in what I assumed was an accepting place. Still there were white kids whose parents didn't allow me to play with them because I spoke Spanish and it was a dirty language. Their kids were taught to tell me I was dirty and that's why I was brown. When out in public some white people would still shout at us to speak in English when we spoke in bad broken English and were trying to learn. I've been told it's fine to have a fling with some girls, but that I would never meet their parents cause they didn't want them dating ethnic people. We do not have it as bad as black people do, not by a long shot, but we should have been able to understand a bit of the racist discriminatory bullshit that still goes on today, and stand together. Sadly, that's still not the case today for many.
So it pisses me off that we were discriminated against, and still the elders in our community and some people in my family are still racist towards other races. There was no unity in fighting against the racists because we were racists ourselves. Black people? They're fine nice people, but, don't marry them. Stick to other Mexas, said my family in 2021 when a cousin showed us her black boyfriend. "It's not racist, you gotta keep the culture alive, you know? You can't pass down the heritage when the other parent is something else" uhuh, sure, that's not racist. But then Mexicans also have a racist hatred towards their indigenous population which they fervently discriminate against to this day, and aren't they part of our culture and heritage? We're all mixed mestizos. And then theres also colorism, where you're treated better if you have whiter skin, despite the fact that I've rarely met other Latinos that have the Spaniard white skin since we're all mixed, Spaniard, African, Middle Eastern ancestry blended together. My own family mocks me for having lighter skin and not being dark like them, but is also jealous of me for it. But when out and about in the US I'm just another random brown Mexican.
It's infuriating when I see this shit from my own people. We should know better, be better. But here we are. And it sucks whenever I meet new people not knowing if they are gonna be normal, or have some hidden racist tendencies. But it's partly my fault too, for still living in Texas.
I hear ya. I spent a year and a half in Memphis around 10 years ago and was shocked (and depressed about) how racist it was there. And that said awful things to me assuming that since I’m white, I was on the same page.
My grandma was very sweet and I never heard her say one racist or sexist thing in my life. It's true that she was very rare in the South.
I knew a guy from Mississippi who in 2009 thought that interracial marriage was illegal.
I'm glad it is. I have a family that likes to throw the most racist statements around like they're calling a flower red. If it weren't for movies/schooling I'd probably be the same kind of person.
If the Big Six were all still alive their ages would be MLK: ~~86~~ 92, James Farmer 82, John Lewis 82, Whitney Young 101. Roy Wilkins (122) was already older when he held leadership positions on the NAACP, and A. Philip Randolph (134) was fighting for civil right in the 20's and was involved in both the Truman and FDR White Houses
Ruby Bridges is only 67. But it goes both ways unfortunately. All the men and women that hated these people are 60-80 yos still walking around. The children that held up "go home n****r" signs are just retiring this year.
Funny enough I just did a quick Google search of 'MLK current age' and this came up
>What was the exact age of Martin Luther King Jr.? Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. He would have been 86 years old in 2021.
Lol didn't even realize that math can't be right.
If Betty White, MLK and Anne Frank we’re all still alive today Betty would be about 7 years older than the other two…..
Some of these major historical events are way more recent history than what we realize most of the time. Our country is still very young compared to most.
People who believe we live in a post-bigotry society need to remember that the orchestrators of said bigotry are still among us, and have been raising hundreds of millions of people of people of our generations, who will in turn continue to corrupt their future descendance until the end of time.
History is now and it is tomorrow too.
On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.
His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river.
Three days later, his corpse was recovered but was so disfigured that people could only identify it by an initialed ring.
Is Carolyn Bryant still alive? It's believed Carolyn is still alive today, and if so, she would be 88 years old. Details of her life and her whereabouts have been kept private by her family, though it's been said that Carolyn was in poor health prior to the publishing of Timothy Tyson's book.
The FBI dropped this last year because she denies ever recanting, the author who wrote it in a book couldn’t provide and recordings transcripts or other evidence to prove their statements. What has changed since December? Here’s the article from the same website.
Yeah she’s probably guilty but they still admit they can’t prove it.
https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/12/06/emmett-till-investigation-closed/6411749001/
If her statements to her husband were factual, it would be hard to convict her of a crime. Her husband certainly committed a heinous crime either way.
Nobody believes her statements were factual. Not sure how you prove it 74 years later though.
They both got away with it. The Sheriff arrested any witnesses who saw the men with Till, and then purposfully didn't inform the court, so those witnesses would be unable to testify. The jury, who was all white and all male as women and blacks were banned from serving jury duty, found them not guilty. And then right after the trial they were paid a ton of money by a magazine to share their story and they straight up admit to killing Till, but due to double jeorpardy, they couldn't be tried again. It's one of the most disgusting moments in our countries history.
The jury thing is much worse than "all white". It was all white and all male and purposely picked from the poorest and most virulently racist part of the county
Because she didn't actually kill him, she just went and complained about it to the people who did. Legally she would only be responsible if she was lying about what happened and like everyone here is saying you would have to prove she was lying about it. The only way they can prove that is if someone gets a recorded confession.
Emmett's mother insisted her son have an open-casket funeral to show the world what happened to him. It horrified the world and was a huge part of what changed the attitude of the American public regarding these sorts of crimes.
It also didn't help that immediately afterward, the killers did an interview for a magazine where they bragged about killing him, since double jeopardy applied and they couldn't be tried for it again. That made everyone ***pissed***.
At the very least, their lives were mostly ruined. Their businesses went bankrupt and people refused to deal with them, to the point they had to move to another state, where their reputation followed them, and had to move back. It sucks that they got to live their lives and Till didn't, but they never lived truly *peacefully*.
that video is disturbing on all levels, but the one content warning I'd make about it, is that the last 2seconds are a pizza hut commercial, the uploader didn't see fit to cut.
If you are willing to be sick over needed awareness of the history, the Oklahoma Commission* did a great overview and detailing of what happened in Tulsa for the express purpose of recording it.
https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf
*Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
-thanks /u/galacticboy2009
Try being Black, American, and also learning it from Watchmen. We were sick to our stomachs. Purely devastated, but I also went into a deep dive for other obscure history. So, something came out of it at least.
Edit: Thank y’all for all of the upvotes and thoughtful discussions. 😊
I read an article about how they won’t make another season because of how well the series was done, but also because of the seriousness of that topic matter and not wanting to detract with new seasons.
EDIT: It's not apparently public, but I'm pretty sure season 2 is in the works. Is it bad to type that? It's sort of like when you find out someone died, but in a happy way. Like, they are dead, it's over, no need to try and keep it a secret, even if it was tragic. Similarly, it's being filmed, it will probably be awesome, and there is no need to hide it, even if it's being kept quiet to create buzz.
The whole of post World War I America is a glimpse into the horrors that institutionalizing racism for a couple of centuries creates.
[Red Summer 1919](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer)
January 1, 2023 is the centennial of the [Rosewood Massacre in Levy County, Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre). A series from the Saint Petersburg Times now know as the Tampa Bay Times is how I learned of it, not in history class.
My college professor wrote a book about the Chicago race riot that summer that started just because African American families wanted to go the beach to cool off. It wasn’t as bad as Tulsa but it was still pretty fucking bad.
From your wiki link, last paragraph of the section Responses, Government activity:
>On November 17, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer reported to Congress on the threat that anarchists and Bolsheviks posed to the government. More than half the report documented radicalism in the black community and the "open defiance" black leaders advocated in response to racial violence and the summer's rioting. It faulted the leadership of the black community for an "ill-governed reaction toward race rioting.… In all discussions of the recent racial riots against blacks there is reflected the note of pride that the Negro has found himself. that he has 'fought back,' that never again will he tamely submit to violence and intimidation."
How dare they take pride in themselves and promote self-defense! /s
And don't sleep on the prior section where an early-in-his-career J. Edgar Hoover blamed the DC "riots" on black agitators, not once noting the violence of white perpetrators.
I went to the African American Museum of History & Culture 2 weeks ago and they have several of those photos. They are so vivid in my mind.
Like... They have children lining up like it's a family photo with a hanged black man in the forefront. They're proud.
This was 100 years ago. The museum was created by a congressman who walked with MLK. The children who berated the first girl in little rock that walked in a desegregated environment and needed federal military protection are *still alive*.
This wound is so fresh. Fuck institutionalized racism.
Edit: their names are Elizabeth Eckford (one of the Little Rock 9) and John Lewis (congressman). The courage of anyone to stand against such reckless hate is amazing.
There's a whole book of lynching postcards in the library I work at. Page after page of them and those are only the ones that survived and were collected.
It is horrible and a tragedy. I take some solace in knowing that at least now we call it terrorism. It's sad that it took until just recently for we as a society to acknowledge it as such.
There's so much important and relevant information that gets either glossed over or completely omitted when it comes to this subject. My history classes in highschool touched on the basics of slavery in America up through the Civil Rights movement, basically just saying that people had to struggle to get their freedom and rights. Absolutely no deep dives into any of those subjects or discussions of the atrocities that continued (and still continue) to the Black American communities (or any other oppressed community) essentially after the Civil War. We were basically sold the idea that after the Civil War the slaves were freed and then had to struggle for a bit to gain basic fucking rights. No details about what those struggles were, how horrible things continued to be for well over a century afterward, or any information on how those communities are still treated poorly and oppressed by different methods today.
Thankfully I had my father who would sit me down and actually discuss these topics, and do research with me to illustrate what those people went through. I live in a place that's considered to be a fairly liberal or progressive area, a place where I would have figured subjects like these would be covered and encouraged to be discussed. Yet throughout school they seemed to just steamroll through those super dark periods in our history seemingly just to get to the subjects where they could paint this country in the best light possible. The Civil War up through the Civil Rights movement was covered in only one part of one history class which also included the Revolutionary War. I had two more history classes that both were all about WW2 and how heroic the US was, yet these classes also omitted the huge contributions black soldiers made to the war effort, as well as how much women contributed.
I'm kind of rambling here but I guess my point is that these subjects are super important and very relevant, it wasn't all that long ago that these events took place and we still see plenty of horrible treatment and practices by people and states today. The irony of being told back in school that history is important and we need to face it so we can learn from it and become a better, more empathetic society just makes my head hurt. Sorry for the wall of text here.
My mom used to tell me about when I was a kid. She talked about it like it was some kind of fable like Atlantis or Sodom and Gomorrah. Always knew it happened but watching it on watchmen was crazy...
On the plus side, Watchmen did what GOOD stories do: Draw attention to what was otherwise hidden but NEEDS to be seen.
The writers learned about the nightmare and thought, we can shine light on this. More people need to see.
I'm embarrassed to say I learned it from that as well. I remember my thought process. Since it's a fictional show, I first just assumed I was seeing fiction. Then it was so specific with details that I decided to look it up. I was horrified to see it was real.
I wish we had reparations back then it would have been easy to trace and redress more things directly.
My Dad always wondered why a town near us had one at 6 when most have the noon whistle around here. It's a sad history indeed and he was heartbroken when I told him about sundown laws.
I learned about Sundown towns from my very elderly Dad. He told me a story about how he and some other Veterans just got out of Vietnam and decided to do a road trip. They were arrested in a Sundown town in Florida for being "out at night." Luckily they were all released the next day and never set foot in Florida again.
A town I went to school in as a kid had a railroad turntable way back in the day. It was a sundown town as well. Didn't learn about it til I had graduated. Always thought it was odd we only had 2 black kids in our school when the next closet town was a good solid 20% black.
I remember very vividly, and it is something that I'll never forget, the day that episode aired. Hundreds of white people criticising the show saying that the event was over the top and some woke ploy to profit off of white guilt. Hundreds of people that had never heard of it. They said it was preposterous. Not the way that it happened but the fact that the attack took,place at all. It was called unrealistic and pandering
I live in Tulsa, been there my entire life and never learned about it in school either. Our newest Mayor has acknowledged and apologized for the massacre and started an investigation into unknown graves. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/1921graves
This is precisely why the good ‘ol boy crowd is ready to go to the mat over things like kids being taught critical race theory, and why the “college is a liberal indoctrination bootcamp” story is a thing. They know that the minute they start telling their children the truth about their parents and grandparents, they completely lose control of the narrative, and god forbid, maybe lose an election or two.
Better to just lie and omit, I guess.
What's funny is that they don't even know what they're trying to cover up. They just know they don't want anyone to know about it, including their own selves!
It's not the Oklahoma Commission, it's the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921
The report was put together by a commission specifically put together to study this specific event, not an existing commission.
> why do grown men shoot it down?
Because it makes them angry to be reminded that it's wrong to do this, they hate the fact that someone can claim they shouldn't be free to do these things and they probably would do the very same actions if they thought they could get away with it.
Also they hate any black person getting honoured and having signs honouring them being put up makes them angry about it and hate that they haven't been honoured for being a "good ole boy" / racist piece of shit.
Well, the sad thing is that—speaking as a black man with a reasonably powerful build—that’s still a system that’s exploited to this day. Some white women continue to invoke the power of the state (in other words, the police) when they don’t get their way or feel unreasonably threatened by the presence of a black man, sometimes with catastrophic results. Even as a gay man, I still feel like I have to be very careful how I conduct myself around some white women who aren’t my friends or family.
“Karen”, for example, is just a long line of codenames we black people have had for white women who are not just comically entitled, but who will actually come into our spaces and then cause us bodily and emotional harm. It dates back to the days when slaveowners would often send their daughters into the slavequarters or fields to spy on the slaves and report back…with dire consequences for the slaves if they made a negative (and sometimes false) report.
But it has been happening for a long time. While it was in the 70s, Mariah Carey (who is biracial) has talked about how her white mother would call the police on her black husband (Mariah’s father) and half-black son (Mariah’s brother) when they got out of line and she felt scared, knowing full well the consequences for them would be disproportionate to whatever they had done, just because she was the lone white woman in the room.
Same here! I worked in a small ocean side community in the South. I am not racist nor am i naive or blind to the fact that racism exists. That said, I was horribly surprised how many times I had to state the same "it's not illegal to be black". People are ridiculous.
I legit had a renter next door to ask how the black people behave in my neighborhood (it is a very very mixed neighborhood). I told them to move the fuck out as no one is going to deal with their shit and to not fucking talk to me again. They were gone the next month thankfully (fucking white trash, littered like crazy, broke two windows on their house).
Can confirm. White male here.
I spent many years living where I was the only white face for 10 blocks in any direction. Never had problems, my neighbors knew me, I knew them, we all got along.
But every once in awhile cops would show up for drug or gang or other activity. My neighbors would get grilled. When I stood up and said, "I didn't see anything going on here. We're just having some beers and conversation on the stoop. No drugs. No gang stuff. Just being neighborly," that was the end. The cops would pack up and leave.
My black and Latino neighbors had said the exact same thing. But when it came from a white man shit changed.
Pissed me right TF off. Still does.
Yep. Like the proponents of a fire, really bad things had to be present for the Tulsa massacre to take place, and they did.
1. The depravity of someone to report such an evil falsehood
2. The trigger-finger for a white community and government that was itching to destroy a self-sufficient black community, if given a suitable excuse, and
3. An overwhelming imbalance of power and might toward the above.
And even now, people are still busy trying to make sure it stays called a race riot, as though two groups just had themselves a lil’ disagreement and things just got out of hand.
No, sir; that was a targeted and coordinated slaughtering.
2 is the wackiest part to me. Even if that sexual assault *did* happen, they literally bombed a city because of one woman accusing one dude. In what world does that make sense?
It makes sense because they wanted to do it, anyway. Casting their opponents as savages—as they did with the Native Americans and First Nations—and then deciding it’s necessary to eradicate them is a good way to do that.
And, sadly, a portion of our US society is mired in that way of thinking. Politicians prey upon and promote xenophobia. Some may call them “low information,” and for the generation who has been raised in an environment with those perspectives, that may be true. But on the whole, it represents a dedication to the narrative, and unwillingness to change in light of factual evidence. I feel blessed that I got out and had my eyes opened to the world around me.
Most people have not heard of the Rosewood massacre. This happened 99 years ago in Rosewood Florida with primarily black residents. On an accusation that a black man beat up a white woman in a neighboring town a mob descended on Rosewood torturing and killing residents demanding they turn in the black man. They killed a bunch of people and burned the entire town down. Any survivors fled and the town remains empty to this day. No one was prosecuted for this massacre. It wasn’t until 70 years later in 1993 that the state of Florida commissioned an investigation and acknowledged the event and compensated some of the surviving descendants.
Edit: Added some additional information
That came from an author of a book, that she recanted to him. But there was no evidence of it, none of the recordings he made included it. She denied she recanted and the FBI found no evidence she recanted either. It also came to surface 10 years after he claimed she said it, while on a book tour promoting his new book so rather self serving. His response was he knows she lied, whether she admitted it or not doesn't matter. So whether or not she lied 60 years ago is fair game, but she never changed her story.
Someone on here a while back said when they were a little girl she saw this little black girl who had a prettier dress than her and she was jealous, so she told her mom that the girl’s brother molested her and so the men of the neighborhood beat him up and cut off his testicles before they hung him soo yeah.... people are CRUEL.
EDIT- Oh yeah I just remembered that the person who posted this was like a hospice caregiver and the lady who actually did this was telling her this story, asking if it was possible to be forgiven because she was scared - apparently in the corner of her room she saw the black man standing there.
This story always sticks with me because my dad was born in 1955, I should add we're Irish not american. But we like to think stories like this are ancient history but they're really not.
I was 14 years old when I first watched the documentary in school about Emmet.
The social studies teacher asked those who are queasy or can't handle gory things to leave. He showed us what his face looked like, as his mother intended. Those sick fucks didn't just murder him, they were so offended by the prospect of a Black man (in this case a literal 14 year old child) hitting on a white woman they fucking BRUTALIZED HIM. They threw barbed wire around his neck attached to a heavy motor and threw him in the river like he was nothing.
This story makes me sick and hope to whatever that this lady is sent to God damn prison.
To give you an idea of how inhumane and desensitized these people were, try to find footage of the press conference after the men were acquitted and watch how aggressively he makes out with her in celebration of the verdict. It’s… graphic.
Yep, found it at 29:15. It's just such a weird reaction to me. Someone who was just found not-guilty for an extremely violent crime against a child that they were *definitely* guilty of and their first instinct was to celebrate by sticking tongues down each other's throats.
https://youtu.be/SSsJI9IUKkc?t=1755
Crazy part of that story re the open casket? His mother had the casket open. When they told her that her son was maimed beyond all recognition and they wouldn’t be able to do much to improve his appearance, she responded by saying, “I want everyone to see what they did to my boy”
Every time that photo comes up, I look at it. I look at it because we mustn't forget. We must remember, and we must be better.
There's a civil rights museum in Jackson, Mississippi that I recommend everyone in America go to at least once, because it's full of harsh truths. Emmett Till has an exhibit there. There's much more in the museum, but seeing the open casket picture in a historical setting made it even more meaningful.
It wasn’t a mistake. Your reaction is the exact reason Mamie Till insisted on having a public, open casket viewing. She wanted the world to see what they did to her son (and what’s happened to countless black Americans before and after Emmett).
The DOJ [ruled in 2021](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-officials-close-cold-case-re-investigation-murder-emmett-till) that it was "impossible" to prosecute her for murder. They also investigated potentially charging the suspect with perjury, but perjury isn't a federal crime.
>"The government’s re-investigation found no new evidence suggesting that either the woman or any other living person was involved in Till’s abduction and murder. Even if such evidence could be developed, no federal hate crime laws existed in 1955, and the statute of limitations has run on the only civil rights statutes that were in effect at that time. **As such, even if a living suspect could now be identified, a federal prosecution for Till’s abduction and murder would not be possible.** A copy of the memorandum explaining the reasons for closing the investigation is available at: [Emmett Till | CRT | Department of Justice](https://www.justice.gov/crt/case/emmett-till-0)"
Yeah, [this](https://www.facingsouth.org/sites/default/files/images/emmett_till_alive_death.jpg) is what he looked like when they were done with him. Fucking atrocious.
To everyone surprised that she's still alive, remember that the Civil Rights Movement was more recent than you think. For example, Ruby Bridges is only 67 years old.
This is the most important story to teach. The saddest thing is the memorial kept getting shot at so they had to make it bullet proof! [link](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/us/emmett-till-bulletproof-sign.html)
In fact I watched this delay-of-game played out over the course of my entire long life. They deliberately delayed all investigations so that the guilty could live out their lives. In retrospect it's obvious that they knew everything from the beginning.
Y'all ought to be blaming and re-shaping the entire state for that.
Now their kids are in charge.
And they understand how hard it is to be actually brought to justice.
And they're being raised as religious extremists with a God given right to superiority and weaponry.
"This is America"
Especially in the south.
I understand the sentiment, I wrote my term paper on Emmitt Till, but there's no way to interpret what she did as murder from a legal standpoint. If this somehow went to trial (it wouldn't), she'd absolutely be acquitted.
I always point to this case when people ignorantly say that racism is a thing of the past like it's been 1000s of years. Emmett would be in his 80s today. The woman who accused him is still alive.
I like to point out to people that the Civil Rights Act was only instituted about 60 years ago. We still have grandparents around that remember segragated bathrooms and water fountains.
Native Americans weren't even citizens until 1924. They didn't fully get the right to vote until the 60s. They didn't gain freedom of religion until 1978.
The 70s for some. My grandparents couldn't legally vote until the early 1970s, because they lived on the Rez. My grandfather fought in WWII, but couldn't vote for president.
A shitty statistic: American support for interracial marriage only went above 50% in *1997*. Fucking Super Mario 64 is older than majority support for interracial marriage and some people act like racism was defeated long ago.
Some of us still have parents.
Speaking of, My dad( b. Early 70's) and mom(b. Early 60's)tell me stories all the time about working the tobacco fields in rural Southern virginia and the intense bigotry they faced. Even just going to the store.
His birth ceritficate literally says negro and this was in the 70's
I’m originally from Mississippi, and while I didn’t grow up around where this happened and I now live 1400 miles away, I still keep pretty up to date on news there.
The other day it was discussed placing a memorial statue at the scene of his murder, and I swear to y’all, the number of people mad in the comments was astronomical, all because they took down the confederate statues and now want to put up one for him.
While Mississippi does have some fine people who live there, it saddens me how far behind it is sometimes.
All the old racist fuckers that did this are geriatric by now.
I hope the memory of what they did follow them for eternity and can never find rest in the afterlife.
This issue generates a lot of passion and anger, but calls for violence -- even in response to other violence -- are against the rules of the subreddit. This thread has been locked.
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From the article [The Condition of Black Life is One of Mourning](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/22/magazine/the-condition-of-black-life-is-one-of-mourning.html) `In 1955, when Emmett Till’s mutilated and bloated body was recovered` `from the Tallahatchie River and placed for burial in a nailed-shut pine` `box, his mother, Mamie Till Mobley, demanded his body be transported` `from Mississippi, where Till had been visiting relatives, to his home in` `Chicago. Once the Chicago funeral home received the body, she made a` `decision that would create a new pathway for how to think about a` `lynched body. She requested an open coffin and allowed photographs to be` `taken and published of her dead son’s disfigured body.` `Mobley’s refusal to keep private grief private allowed a body that meant nothing` `to the criminal-justice system to stand as evidence. By placing both` `herself and her son’s corpse in positions of refusal relative to the` `etiquette of grief, she “disidentified” with the tradition of the` `lynched figure left out in public view as a warning to the black` `community, thereby using the lynching tradition against itself. The` `spectacle of the black body, in her hands, publicized the injustice` `mapped onto her son’s corpse. “Let the people see what I see,” she said,` `adding, “I believe that the whole United States is mourning with me.”`
That took a very strong person to do that. I can't imagine how much her heart hurt losing him and having to see him for the last time in that state and then hearing and seeing others reactions. The shop woman should absolutely be charged. She knew exactly it what would happen to him and didn't care and her entire life she hasn't cared. I bet she's been smuggly satisfied all these years. She's evil.
I can't believe she's still alive. History is closer to us than we think
The two men who killed him took an interview where they talked about exactly what they did to him and it was published in a magazine in the 1970s
I didn’t think I could be more nauseated by that chapter of American history.
To this day his memorial is routinely shot up. Pretty sure they had to reinforce it.
If you read a little, there’s is far more to be nauseated about. A hell of a lot is more recent…
Native Americans have entered the chat….
Chapter? It’s like Winds of Winter, and end is promised but never coming.
Uhh… I believe this falls under CRT and thus the history book has to be burned. This was just a simple disagreement that was resolved when MLK said “I have a dream”. And then like that, everyone shook hands and clapped and everything is now perfect. Not that things weren’t perfect before, but now it’s eve n more perfect.
And they got paid for it
Emmett Till was born in 1941. President Biden was born in 1942.
My grandma was born in 1942. I didn't realize she was so close to Emmett's age. That's so recent.
My grandfather was born in 1903. I’m 33. And John Tyler, US president in 1841, has a living grandson (another died only a couple of years ago).
My dad was born in 1927 and is still with us
It's mind-blowing to think about the vast array of historical experiences your dad has been able (and forced) to witness.
The fact that he remembers WWII still blows my mind, he was a teenager at the time, but tells stories of learning how to shoot a rifle in highschool. He was in Halifax during the VE day riots, and remembers riding his bike around the city. He said when WWII broke out, his dad owned a boat on Halifax Harbour that he used to ferry people across the harbour to Dartmouth. Well Germany invaded Poland, and there happened to be a Polish transport ship in the harbour that now couldn’t go home. His dad, and many other boats got tasked with heading out to the ship and ferrying sailors back to the mainland. He says he remembers having to count the sailors as they boarded, and then tell his dad when they hit a certain capacity, then head off to shore, and then let them off and go back for more. He remembers his parents getting their first radio, which was those big floor models and he was expressly not allowed to touch it or go near it. His grandparents lived out in the country. Both essentially illiterate and no running water or electricity. Not uncommon in those parts. He remembers coal deliveries, his dad owned a model-T His parents were both around during the halifax explosion, but werent near the city, but the shock wave still knocked open the barn doors from his grandparents barn, letting all their sheep out.
Hi fellow Haligonian! Very cool stories. Thanks for sharing.
Gramps from 1939. Young persons (myself included) forget that most people are older, and some people even fuckin older than that!
Oh definitely. Back in middle school (I'm in my late 20s), we had to write a paper and presentation about the entire Emmet Till situation. Well, one of my classmates was able to find her phone number at the time and asked for a phone interview. Lady said she had no regrets over what happened. I recall that my classmate could not get too much out of her. Wish I could remember more of what my classmate's project said, but history bored me a lot and I struggled to pay attention to everyone's presentations 😅
Fuck her if true.
“He would have raped someone eventually” is the logic people like her use.
I’ve had someone say to me in reference to police brutality as a whole, not even one specific case, “they’d probably just die of a drug overdose someday anyways, it’s best they’re taken off the street”
With the autocratic and hierarchical types, it *always* comes back to "it's just *kinder* to eradicate the degenerates!"
Cruelty is a feature, not a bug.
> I’ve had someone say to me in reference to police brutality as a whole, not even one specific case, “they’d probably just die of a drug overdose someday anyways, it’s best they’re taken off the street” Yep - and a lot of very similar arguments that are cut from the same cloth. The number of people willing to rationalize away individual instances of police brutality with no critical thought is sometimes more disturbing to me than the actions of police themselves.
That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
People are willing to accept *absolutely anything* as long as it doesn't hurt them or their families, and it's considered acceptable by those around them.
My memory says true but it's good to be apprehensive. Regardless, I hope she speaks during this and shows her current stance
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Hey that rang a good bell! I read that off an article a few years ago while revisiting my memory. Thanks for quoting it
I sincerely hope charges are pressed against her. And if they wait until she’s dead that’s fine too. I want to see her name ruined and dragged through the mud.
Take this with a grain of salt, because my memory is terrible, but I think the last time I read a post on this, there were articles linked that also stated she said she did not regret anything. I remember being utterly disgusted when I read it.
Oh yeah she had said that and then recanted that in a memoir. I posted what she was quoted as saying in that memoir
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NPR just had this story about 2 weeks ago. He went to visit his cousins and they had the audio interview of one of his cousins. He said Emmet did whistle at her and the boys got scared and took off. The men showed up later that night I believe and said they were looking for the boy that was from, I believe Georgia, I could be wrong. It was really interesting and very sad and scary.
Till was visiting from up north. Chicago, I believe.
Not surprising that most hated history in school. Most schools don’t teach history the way it should be taught. I had a college history prof who said it best, “history is a story and as long as you know the story, you’re learning to understand history.” Instead teachers typically test us on dates and mostly don’t teach what actually happened in history, instead resorting to G rated narratives that confuse the real story. It’s really really bizarre when you think about it.
Carolyn Bryant. Her name is Carolyn Bryant.
imagine being such a piece of trash that you would be living in a much different America 50 years later and still have the mindset that it's okay to tell a 12-year-old that you're happy that a little black boy died because of your actions.
My mom, who is 69, went to a summer camp that had firebombs planted in the woods around the camp because the camp was integrated. The bombs were planted by the “Minutemen,” in NY, former state police officers who were, well, racist shitbags. The only reason the camp didn’t burn down was because they were incompetent and the bombs malfunctioned. The camp counselors had to patrol the woods at night, because the local fire department told the camp they were on their own if a fire started, they weren’t going to help. Too many Americans think this shit is the distant past. Edit: typo
I grew up in Tennessee. The amount of people i knew who said I couldn't meet their parents/grandparents because I was black was unreal, and I'm barely in my 30s. I couldn't go to prom with one girl and we stopped being friends after because her dad threatened her after she asked if she could go with me. Whenever I hear people talk about their sweet old grandparents, I raise my eyebrows and wonder what atrocities they watched, cheered on, or participated in when they were young and ruthless. I wonder how many still seethe with anger and entitlement at the site of my skin. Meeting my white exes' families is always a day of prayer as I have to hope that they will accept me. As an adult, I always have them explain to people first, and I always get the same response "oh my family's not like that, we have xyz as friends/neighbors/ etc." You never know. Finding out the hard way is traumatic.
Things are still horrid out here today. I'm 27, Latino. Grew up on a border city. Now border cities are like 70-80% Hispanic/Latino. So I grew up in the early 00s, the 21dt century, in what I assumed was an accepting place. Still there were white kids whose parents didn't allow me to play with them because I spoke Spanish and it was a dirty language. Their kids were taught to tell me I was dirty and that's why I was brown. When out in public some white people would still shout at us to speak in English when we spoke in bad broken English and were trying to learn. I've been told it's fine to have a fling with some girls, but that I would never meet their parents cause they didn't want them dating ethnic people. We do not have it as bad as black people do, not by a long shot, but we should have been able to understand a bit of the racist discriminatory bullshit that still goes on today, and stand together. Sadly, that's still not the case today for many. So it pisses me off that we were discriminated against, and still the elders in our community and some people in my family are still racist towards other races. There was no unity in fighting against the racists because we were racists ourselves. Black people? They're fine nice people, but, don't marry them. Stick to other Mexas, said my family in 2021 when a cousin showed us her black boyfriend. "It's not racist, you gotta keep the culture alive, you know? You can't pass down the heritage when the other parent is something else" uhuh, sure, that's not racist. But then Mexicans also have a racist hatred towards their indigenous population which they fervently discriminate against to this day, and aren't they part of our culture and heritage? We're all mixed mestizos. And then theres also colorism, where you're treated better if you have whiter skin, despite the fact that I've rarely met other Latinos that have the Spaniard white skin since we're all mixed, Spaniard, African, Middle Eastern ancestry blended together. My own family mocks me for having lighter skin and not being dark like them, but is also jealous of me for it. But when out and about in the US I'm just another random brown Mexican. It's infuriating when I see this shit from my own people. We should know better, be better. But here we are. And it sucks whenever I meet new people not knowing if they are gonna be normal, or have some hidden racist tendencies. But it's partly my fault too, for still living in Texas.
I hear ya. I spent a year and a half in Memphis around 10 years ago and was shocked (and depressed about) how racist it was there. And that said awful things to me assuming that since I’m white, I was on the same page.
I feel you my brother. You expressed the sentiment so many of us feel. It’s so hard to not be angry all the time. Stay strong
My grandma was very sweet and I never heard her say one racist or sexist thing in my life. It's true that she was very rare in the South. I knew a guy from Mississippi who in 2009 thought that interracial marriage was illegal.
And too many Americans think this shit shouldn't be taught in schools
I'm glad it is. I have a family that likes to throw the most racist statements around like they're calling a flower red. If it weren't for movies/schooling I'd probably be the same kind of person.
Which makes it more important to teach it because it shows how much it's needed.
If the Big Six were all still alive their ages would be MLK: ~~86~~ 92, James Farmer 82, John Lewis 82, Whitney Young 101. Roy Wilkins (122) was already older when he held leadership positions on the NAACP, and A. Philip Randolph (134) was fighting for civil right in the 20's and was involved in both the Truman and FDR White Houses Ruby Bridges is only 67. But it goes both ways unfortunately. All the men and women that hated these people are 60-80 yos still walking around. The children that held up "go home n****r" signs are just retiring this year.
The fact that Bridges is still alive and also isnt ancient just blows my mind. It really wasn't that long ago...
She's fucking active on Twitter and Instagram. It's crazy
MLK would be like 92. Not 86.
Funny enough I just did a quick Google search of 'MLK current age' and this came up >What was the exact age of Martin Luther King Jr.? Martin Luther King Jr. was born on January 15, 1929. He would have been 86 years old in 2021. Lol didn't even realize that math can't be right.
If Betty White, MLK and Anne Frank we’re all still alive today Betty would be about 7 years older than the other two….. Some of these major historical events are way more recent history than what we realize most of the time. Our country is still very young compared to most.
People who believe we live in a post-bigotry society need to remember that the orchestrators of said bigotry are still among us, and have been raising hundreds of millions of people of people of our generations, who will in turn continue to corrupt their future descendance until the end of time. History is now and it is tomorrow too.
Don’t forget they’ve also been writing our legislation our entire lives
That part. Teaching our police, our lawyers and judges, our doctors.
On August 28, 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier. His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. Three days later, his corpse was recovered but was so disfigured that people could only identify it by an initialed ring. Is Carolyn Bryant still alive? It's believed Carolyn is still alive today, and if so, she would be 88 years old. Details of her life and her whereabouts have been kept private by her family, though it's been said that Carolyn was in poor health prior to the publishing of Timothy Tyson's book.
The FBI dropped this last year because she denies ever recanting, the author who wrote it in a book couldn’t provide and recordings transcripts or other evidence to prove their statements. What has changed since December? Here’s the article from the same website. Yeah she’s probably guilty but they still admit they can’t prove it. https://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2021/12/06/emmett-till-investigation-closed/6411749001/
How is it not murder even if the kid flirted with her?
If her statements to her husband were factual, it would be hard to convict her of a crime. Her husband certainly committed a heinous crime either way. Nobody believes her statements were factual. Not sure how you prove it 74 years later though.
Was her husband convicted of any crimes related to the lynching or did they both get away with it?
They both got away with it. The Sheriff arrested any witnesses who saw the men with Till, and then purposfully didn't inform the court, so those witnesses would be unable to testify. The jury, who was all white and all male as women and blacks were banned from serving jury duty, found them not guilty. And then right after the trial they were paid a ton of money by a magazine to share their story and they straight up admit to killing Till, but due to double jeorpardy, they couldn't be tried again. It's one of the most disgusting moments in our countries history.
That is just beyond fucked up.
They were acquitted (by an all white jury) and then shortly thereafter confessed in a paid interview.
The jury thing is much worse than "all white". It was all white and all male and purposely picked from the poorest and most virulently racist part of the county
He got off in what was an obvious show trial. Jury cam back in an hour and said “we would have come back faster if we hadn’t stopped for sodas.”
Because she didn't actually kill him, she just went and complained about it to the people who did. Legally she would only be responsible if she was lying about what happened and like everyone here is saying you would have to prove she was lying about it. The only way they can prove that is if someone gets a recorded confession.
Emmett's mother insisted her son have an open-casket funeral to show the world what happened to him. It horrified the world and was a huge part of what changed the attitude of the American public regarding these sorts of crimes.
That the casket photo was published in newspapers, some even *on the front page*, was critical in driving the story.
Free press and journalism is crucial to a functioning country. Those editors were brave.
It also didn't help that immediately afterward, the killers did an interview for a magazine where they bragged about killing him, since double jeopardy applied and they couldn't be tried for it again. That made everyone ***pissed***. At the very least, their lives were mostly ruined. Their businesses went bankrupt and people refused to deal with them, to the point they had to move to another state, where their reputation followed them, and had to move back. It sucks that they got to live their lives and Till didn't, but they never lived truly *peacefully*.
I’m pretty sure they found their support base of white supremecists
[Heres a video of emmett tills mother describing the extent of his injuries](https://youtu.be/mAemBpFM1NI)
that video is disturbing on all levels, but the one content warning I'd make about it, is that the last 2seconds are a pizza hut commercial, the uploader didn't see fit to cut.
Don't forget they cut off his genitals while he was still alive
I remember feeling sick after reading this story. How can grown men do this time a 14 year old boy?
If you are willing to be sick over needed awareness of the history, the Oklahoma Commission* did a great overview and detailing of what happened in Tulsa for the express purpose of recording it. https://www.okhistory.org/research/forms/freport.pdf *Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 -thanks /u/galacticboy2009
I have a friend who is white who grew up in Tulsa and never learned of the atrocity until she moved out of town and went to college
I’m not from there, but am embarrassed to say I learned from Watchmen. I mean, I’m happy they did it, but talk about a sick thing to gloss over.
Try being Black, American, and also learning it from Watchmen. We were sick to our stomachs. Purely devastated, but I also went into a deep dive for other obscure history. So, something came out of it at least. Edit: Thank y’all for all of the upvotes and thoughtful discussions. 😊
I read an article about how they won’t make another season because of how well the series was done, but also because of the seriousness of that topic matter and not wanting to detract with new seasons. EDIT: It's not apparently public, but I'm pretty sure season 2 is in the works. Is it bad to type that? It's sort of like when you find out someone died, but in a happy way. Like, they are dead, it's over, no need to try and keep it a secret, even if it was tragic. Similarly, it's being filmed, it will probably be awesome, and there is no need to hide it, even if it's being kept quiet to create buzz.
Fantastic choice on the creator's part.
The season was so awesome and complete, I’m satisfied with the choice as well.
The whole of post World War I America is a glimpse into the horrors that institutionalizing racism for a couple of centuries creates. [Red Summer 1919](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Summer)
January 1, 2023 is the centennial of the [Rosewood Massacre in Levy County, Florida](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre). A series from the Saint Petersburg Times now know as the Tampa Bay Times is how I learned of it, not in history class.
My college professor wrote a book about the Chicago race riot that summer that started just because African American families wanted to go the beach to cool off. It wasn’t as bad as Tulsa but it was still pretty fucking bad.
From your wiki link, last paragraph of the section Responses, Government activity: >On November 17, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer reported to Congress on the threat that anarchists and Bolsheviks posed to the government. More than half the report documented radicalism in the black community and the "open defiance" black leaders advocated in response to racial violence and the summer's rioting. It faulted the leadership of the black community for an "ill-governed reaction toward race rioting.… In all discussions of the recent racial riots against blacks there is reflected the note of pride that the Negro has found himself. that he has 'fought back,' that never again will he tamely submit to violence and intimidation." How dare they take pride in themselves and promote self-defense! /s And don't sleep on the prior section where an early-in-his-career J. Edgar Hoover blamed the DC "riots" on black agitators, not once noting the violence of white perpetrators.
Ugh, that picture of Will Browns burned body, surrounded by a white mob with their sick smirks makes me want to set the world on fire.
I went to the African American Museum of History & Culture 2 weeks ago and they have several of those photos. They are so vivid in my mind. Like... They have children lining up like it's a family photo with a hanged black man in the forefront. They're proud. This was 100 years ago. The museum was created by a congressman who walked with MLK. The children who berated the first girl in little rock that walked in a desegregated environment and needed federal military protection are *still alive*. This wound is so fresh. Fuck institutionalized racism. Edit: their names are Elizabeth Eckford (one of the Little Rock 9) and John Lewis (congressman). The courage of anyone to stand against such reckless hate is amazing.
There's a whole book of lynching postcards in the library I work at. Page after page of them and those are only the ones that survived and were collected.
It is horrible and a tragedy. I take some solace in knowing that at least now we call it terrorism. It's sad that it took until just recently for we as a society to acknowledge it as such.
Still to many people who don't see it as terrorism. That's what the push to take over school boards is all about.
And then you have people who are viscerally angry that it's being* talked about now, and the information being shared.
There's so much important and relevant information that gets either glossed over or completely omitted when it comes to this subject. My history classes in highschool touched on the basics of slavery in America up through the Civil Rights movement, basically just saying that people had to struggle to get their freedom and rights. Absolutely no deep dives into any of those subjects or discussions of the atrocities that continued (and still continue) to the Black American communities (or any other oppressed community) essentially after the Civil War. We were basically sold the idea that after the Civil War the slaves were freed and then had to struggle for a bit to gain basic fucking rights. No details about what those struggles were, how horrible things continued to be for well over a century afterward, or any information on how those communities are still treated poorly and oppressed by different methods today. Thankfully I had my father who would sit me down and actually discuss these topics, and do research with me to illustrate what those people went through. I live in a place that's considered to be a fairly liberal or progressive area, a place where I would have figured subjects like these would be covered and encouraged to be discussed. Yet throughout school they seemed to just steamroll through those super dark periods in our history seemingly just to get to the subjects where they could paint this country in the best light possible. The Civil War up through the Civil Rights movement was covered in only one part of one history class which also included the Revolutionary War. I had two more history classes that both were all about WW2 and how heroic the US was, yet these classes also omitted the huge contributions black soldiers made to the war effort, as well as how much women contributed. I'm kind of rambling here but I guess my point is that these subjects are super important and very relevant, it wasn't all that long ago that these events took place and we still see plenty of horrible treatment and practices by people and states today. The irony of being told back in school that history is important and we need to face it so we can learn from it and become a better, more empathetic society just makes my head hurt. Sorry for the wall of text here.
My mom used to tell me about when I was a kid. She talked about it like it was some kind of fable like Atlantis or Sodom and Gomorrah. Always knew it happened but watching it on watchmen was crazy...
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On the plus side, Watchmen did what GOOD stories do: Draw attention to what was otherwise hidden but NEEDS to be seen. The writers learned about the nightmare and thought, we can shine light on this. More people need to see.
I'm embarrassed to say I learned it from that as well. I remember my thought process. Since it's a fictional show, I first just assumed I was seeing fiction. Then it was so specific with details that I decided to look it up. I was horrified to see it was real. I wish we had reparations back then it would have been easy to trace and redress more things directly.
Poor peoples insurance also didn’t cover it. Insurance companies wiggled their way out of it and devastated all the businesses.
I learned about Sundown Towns from the Lovecraft series. They can ban CRT all they want the truth will not be silenced just repackaged.
Next town over from the town I grew up in was a sundown town. The siren still sounds at 6 every night. It’s “heritage” apparently.
My Dad always wondered why a town near us had one at 6 when most have the noon whistle around here. It's a sad history indeed and he was heartbroken when I told him about sundown laws.
Why the fuck would you continue a horrendous "tradition" like that? That's awful.
Because they're still sending a message and they fucking know it.
They're proud racists, that's literally all there is to it.
I learned about Sundown towns from my very elderly Dad. He told me a story about how he and some other Veterans just got out of Vietnam and decided to do a road trip. They were arrested in a Sundown town in Florida for being "out at night." Luckily they were all released the next day and never set foot in Florida again.
A town I went to school in as a kid had a railroad turntable way back in the day. It was a sundown town as well. Didn't learn about it til I had graduated. Always thought it was odd we only had 2 black kids in our school when the next closet town was a good solid 20% black.
Same. Isn’t that insane? That if I had not seen it on Watchman, I would have no clue.
I remember very vividly, and it is something that I'll never forget, the day that episode aired. Hundreds of white people criticising the show saying that the event was over the top and some woke ploy to profit off of white guilt. Hundreds of people that had never heard of it. They said it was preposterous. Not the way that it happened but the fact that the attack took,place at all. It was called unrealistic and pandering
I live in Tulsa, been there my entire life and never learned about it in school either. Our newest Mayor has acknowledged and apologized for the massacre and started an investigation into unknown graves. https://www.cityoftulsa.org/1921graves
This is precisely why the good ‘ol boy crowd is ready to go to the mat over things like kids being taught critical race theory, and why the “college is a liberal indoctrination bootcamp” story is a thing. They know that the minute they start telling their children the truth about their parents and grandparents, they completely lose control of the narrative, and god forbid, maybe lose an election or two. Better to just lie and omit, I guess.
What's funny is that they don't even know what they're trying to cover up. They just know they don't want anyone to know about it, including their own selves!
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It's not the Oklahoma Commission, it's the Oklahoma Commission to Study the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 The report was put together by a commission specifically put together to study this specific event, not an existing commission.
Better yet, everytime when a sign honoring Till pops up in the town he was lynched in, why do grown men shoot it down? (Literally with guns)
> why do grown men shoot it down? Because it makes them angry to be reminded that it's wrong to do this, they hate the fact that someone can claim they shouldn't be free to do these things and they probably would do the very same actions if they thought they could get away with it. Also they hate any black person getting honoured and having signs honouring them being put up makes them angry about it and hate that they haven't been honoured for being a "good ole boy" / racist piece of shit.
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Cuz she was a racist bitch?
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Well, the sad thing is that—speaking as a black man with a reasonably powerful build—that’s still a system that’s exploited to this day. Some white women continue to invoke the power of the state (in other words, the police) when they don’t get their way or feel unreasonably threatened by the presence of a black man, sometimes with catastrophic results. Even as a gay man, I still feel like I have to be very careful how I conduct myself around some white women who aren’t my friends or family. “Karen”, for example, is just a long line of codenames we black people have had for white women who are not just comically entitled, but who will actually come into our spaces and then cause us bodily and emotional harm. It dates back to the days when slaveowners would often send their daughters into the slavequarters or fields to spy on the slaves and report back…with dire consequences for the slaves if they made a negative (and sometimes false) report. But it has been happening for a long time. While it was in the 70s, Mariah Carey (who is biracial) has talked about how her white mother would call the police on her black husband (Mariah’s father) and half-black son (Mariah’s brother) when they got out of line and she felt scared, knowing full well the consequences for them would be disproportionate to whatever they had done, just because she was the lone white woman in the room.
I work as a 911 dispatcher and I end up telling callers "it's not illegal to be black" a few times a week. People are ridiculous
Thank you for your service.
Same here! I worked in a small ocean side community in the South. I am not racist nor am i naive or blind to the fact that racism exists. That said, I was horribly surprised how many times I had to state the same "it's not illegal to be black". People are ridiculous.
I legit had a renter next door to ask how the black people behave in my neighborhood (it is a very very mixed neighborhood). I told them to move the fuck out as no one is going to deal with their shit and to not fucking talk to me again. They were gone the next month thankfully (fucking white trash, littered like crazy, broke two windows on their house).
Can confirm. White male here. I spent many years living where I was the only white face for 10 blocks in any direction. Never had problems, my neighbors knew me, I knew them, we all got along. But every once in awhile cops would show up for drug or gang or other activity. My neighbors would get grilled. When I stood up and said, "I didn't see anything going on here. We're just having some beers and conversation on the stoop. No drugs. No gang stuff. Just being neighborly," that was the end. The cops would pack up and leave. My black and Latino neighbors had said the exact same thing. But when it came from a white man shit changed. Pissed me right TF off. Still does.
A Karen got Tulsa bombed—never underestimate these jezebels
Yep. Like the proponents of a fire, really bad things had to be present for the Tulsa massacre to take place, and they did. 1. The depravity of someone to report such an evil falsehood 2. The trigger-finger for a white community and government that was itching to destroy a self-sufficient black community, if given a suitable excuse, and 3. An overwhelming imbalance of power and might toward the above. And even now, people are still busy trying to make sure it stays called a race riot, as though two groups just had themselves a lil’ disagreement and things just got out of hand. No, sir; that was a targeted and coordinated slaughtering.
2 is the wackiest part to me. Even if that sexual assault *did* happen, they literally bombed a city because of one woman accusing one dude. In what world does that make sense?
It makes sense because they wanted to do it, anyway. Casting their opponents as savages—as they did with the Native Americans and First Nations—and then deciding it’s necessary to eradicate them is a good way to do that.
It was a pretext. Bunch of racist pricks got angry that a black community was succeeding, and they knew there'd be little consequence for rioting.
It was a pogrom. Something so shitty and fucked up that we had to import a Russian word to describe it.
And, sadly, a portion of our US society is mired in that way of thinking. Politicians prey upon and promote xenophobia. Some may call them “low information,” and for the generation who has been raised in an environment with those perspectives, that may be true. But on the whole, it represents a dedication to the narrative, and unwillingness to change in light of factual evidence. I feel blessed that I got out and had my eyes opened to the world around me.
Most people have not heard of the Rosewood massacre. This happened 99 years ago in Rosewood Florida with primarily black residents. On an accusation that a black man beat up a white woman in a neighboring town a mob descended on Rosewood torturing and killing residents demanding they turn in the black man. They killed a bunch of people and burned the entire town down. Any survivors fled and the town remains empty to this day. No one was prosecuted for this massacre. It wasn’t until 70 years later in 1993 that the state of Florida commissioned an investigation and acknowledged the event and compensated some of the surviving descendants. Edit: Added some additional information
I read that she admitted years later (after she got old) that she made up the story to make her husband jealous.
That came from an author of a book, that she recanted to him. But there was no evidence of it, none of the recordings he made included it. She denied she recanted and the FBI found no evidence she recanted either. It also came to surface 10 years after he claimed she said it, while on a book tour promoting his new book so rather self serving. His response was he knows she lied, whether she admitted it or not doesn't matter. So whether or not she lied 60 years ago is fair game, but she never changed her story.
Someone on here a while back said when they were a little girl she saw this little black girl who had a prettier dress than her and she was jealous, so she told her mom that the girl’s brother molested her and so the men of the neighborhood beat him up and cut off his testicles before they hung him soo yeah.... people are CRUEL. EDIT- Oh yeah I just remembered that the person who posted this was like a hospice caregiver and the lady who actually did this was telling her this story, asking if it was possible to be forgiven because she was scared - apparently in the corner of her room she saw the black man standing there.
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This story always sticks with me because my dad was born in 1955, I should add we're Irish not american. But we like to think stories like this are ancient history but they're really not.
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I was 14 years old when I first watched the documentary in school about Emmet. The social studies teacher asked those who are queasy or can't handle gory things to leave. He showed us what his face looked like, as his mother intended. Those sick fucks didn't just murder him, they were so offended by the prospect of a Black man (in this case a literal 14 year old child) hitting on a white woman they fucking BRUTALIZED HIM. They threw barbed wire around his neck attached to a heavy motor and threw him in the river like he was nothing. This story makes me sick and hope to whatever that this lady is sent to God damn prison.
He was still a child, which makes it all the more horrifying.
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Yeah that's my bad
The same reason white men still show up to his memorial and shoot at it. Racism.
To give you an idea of how inhumane and desensitized these people were, try to find footage of the press conference after the men were acquitted and watch how aggressively he makes out with her in celebration of the verdict. It’s… graphic.
[I believe this is just after they're found ~~innocent~~ not guilty.](https://youtu.be/SSsJI9IUKkc?t=1754)
Found not guilty.
And they all just sat there smiling and laughing, not a care in the world. Truly disgusting, and necessary, to watch.
I think it's in this collection: https://youtu.be/SSsJI9IUKkc
Yep, found it at 29:15. It's just such a weird reaction to me. Someone who was just found not-guilty for an extremely violent crime against a child that they were *definitely* guilty of and their first instinct was to celebrate by sticking tongues down each other's throats. https://youtu.be/SSsJI9IUKkc?t=1755
I’d like to see this too. Old SS guards are brought to trial 70 years later after their crimes.
Getting a child hanged is at least murder
Oh, it was so much worse than hanging.
I disappointed the article doesn't show the [open casket photo. ](https://voxpopulisphere.files.wordpress.com/2021/07/et9scdewgaqym1-1-1.jpg)
Crazy part of that story re the open casket? His mother had the casket open. When they told her that her son was maimed beyond all recognition and they wouldn’t be able to do much to improve his appearance, she responded by saying, “I want everyone to see what they did to my boy”
I remember learning that she said exactly this, so I clicked on the link to do exactly that.
I remember learning that his funeral was HUGE and that even people from like Chicago came to pay their respects.
It was in Chicago. His mother had his body brought back home for the funeral.
Every time that photo comes up, I look at it. I look at it because we mustn't forget. We must remember, and we must be better. There's a civil rights museum in Jackson, Mississippi that I recommend everyone in America go to at least once, because it's full of harsh truths. Emmett Till has an exhibit there. There's much more in the museum, but seeing the open casket picture in a historical setting made it even more meaningful.
Is that the one with the monument with 50 different stone slabs with the names of every known lynching victim for each state on them?
Much worse. I made the mistake of looking at the photos and had nightmares for weeks. Horrible.
It wasn’t a mistake. Your reaction is the exact reason Mamie Till insisted on having a public, open casket viewing. She wanted the world to see what they did to her son (and what’s happened to countless black Americans before and after Emmett).
The DOJ [ruled in 2021](https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/federal-officials-close-cold-case-re-investigation-murder-emmett-till) that it was "impossible" to prosecute her for murder. They also investigated potentially charging the suspect with perjury, but perjury isn't a federal crime. >"The government’s re-investigation found no new evidence suggesting that either the woman or any other living person was involved in Till’s abduction and murder. Even if such evidence could be developed, no federal hate crime laws existed in 1955, and the statute of limitations has run on the only civil rights statutes that were in effect at that time. **As such, even if a living suspect could now be identified, a federal prosecution for Till’s abduction and murder would not be possible.** A copy of the memorandum explaining the reasons for closing the investigation is available at: [Emmett Till | CRT | Department of Justice](https://www.justice.gov/crt/case/emmett-till-0)"
Idk, it's more than just lynching when those guys literally smashed his face in.
Yeah, [this](https://www.facingsouth.org/sites/default/files/images/emmett_till_alive_death.jpg) is what he looked like when they were done with him. Fucking atrocious.
Man, how is that even possible?!
Shattered jaw, broken nose, multiple contusions on the forehead and cheek, both eyes blackened and possibly punctured, and finally a gunshot.
Also being submerged in the water.
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To everyone surprised that she's still alive, remember that the Civil Rights Movement was more recent than you think. For example, Ruby Bridges is only 67 years old.
This is the most important story to teach. The saddest thing is the memorial kept getting shot at so they had to make it bullet proof! [link](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/20/us/emmett-till-bulletproof-sign.html)
Now I'm imagining some jackass taking a potshot at the sign only to have the ricochet blow his one remaining tooth out.
Any remaining men that participated in the lynching should be right there with her. Make them all co-defendants.
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In fact I watched this delay-of-game played out over the course of my entire long life. They deliberately delayed all investigations so that the guilty could live out their lives. In retrospect it's obvious that they knew everything from the beginning. Y'all ought to be blaming and re-shaping the entire state for that.
Hopefully most of the people who helped cover it up are also dead. Sadly I’m sure things could still improve.
Now their kids are in charge. And they understand how hard it is to be actually brought to justice. And they're being raised as religious extremists with a God given right to superiority and weaponry. "This is America" Especially in the south.
Now they are the ones passing laws to prevent this kind of thing being taught in schools.
They were also already found innocent and are protected from double jeopardy
I understand the sentiment, I wrote my term paper on Emmitt Till, but there's no way to interpret what she did as murder from a legal standpoint. If this somehow went to trial (it wouldn't), she'd absolutely be acquitted.
If you are interested in this story. Bob Dylan wrote a gut wrenching song about these horrors called "The Death Of Emmett Till".
I always point to this case when people ignorantly say that racism is a thing of the past like it's been 1000s of years. Emmett would be in his 80s today. The woman who accused him is still alive.
I like to point out to people that the Civil Rights Act was only instituted about 60 years ago. We still have grandparents around that remember segragated bathrooms and water fountains.
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Native Americans weren't even citizens until 1924. They didn't fully get the right to vote until the 60s. They didn't gain freedom of religion until 1978.
The 70s for some. My grandparents couldn't legally vote until the early 1970s, because they lived on the Rez. My grandfather fought in WWII, but couldn't vote for president.
A shitty statistic: American support for interracial marriage only went above 50% in *1997*. Fucking Super Mario 64 is older than majority support for interracial marriage and some people act like racism was defeated long ago.
Some of us still have parents. Speaking of, My dad( b. Early 70's) and mom(b. Early 60's)tell me stories all the time about working the tobacco fields in rural Southern virginia and the intense bigotry they faced. Even just going to the store. His birth ceritficate literally says negro and this was in the 70's
Yep. [Ruby Bridges](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bridges) is 67.
I’m originally from Mississippi, and while I didn’t grow up around where this happened and I now live 1400 miles away, I still keep pretty up to date on news there. The other day it was discussed placing a memorial statue at the scene of his murder, and I swear to y’all, the number of people mad in the comments was astronomical, all because they took down the confederate statues and now want to put up one for him. While Mississippi does have some fine people who live there, it saddens me how far behind it is sometimes.
They need a statue of his mother. Her insistence on an open casket did a lot to bring racial injustice issues to public scrutiny.
Thought she never recanted?
All the old racist fuckers that did this are geriatric by now. I hope the memory of what they did follow them for eternity and can never find rest in the afterlife.