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New Pittsburgh Courier: The horrific images of 14-year-old Emmett Till’s bloated, disfigured body at his 1955 funeral has remained in Joyce Meggerson-Moore’s mind since she saw it in two Black magazine years ago.
I heard this story in junior year of high school in my history class and I remember being absolutely floored by it. I could not believe something so tragic happened to such a young man in the fifties. I was also absolutely proud of his mother making the decision to have an open casket funeral just to broadcast the brutality he was shown at the ending of his life. And while I don’t agree that this was the start of the Civil Rights Movement I do believe that it was a very necessary step in the rallying and organization of black people in the fifties and onwards. I have to say that I don’t like the way the article documents the event as him “whistling” at a white woman because the way I learned the event is that no one really knows how vulgar or direct he was with her, and with all the racial bias present in this time, I don’t think we’ll ever know.
This is so accurate that the same thing is happening now among black teens. I think its so important that this story be told in the current day and age to show that the context may have changed, but black young men, and women like SAndra Bland are still being killed.This killing was done by spiteful white boys in his visit to the south. The context was unclear of why the killing happened, similar to Trayvon Martin, but the outcome was very clear- it disturbed the nation and sparked civil rights protests. I've never really thought about how similar their tragic deaths were. Also, I'm proud of this theater, a local one too, having the guts to show this. It's not exactly a marketable or probably crowd-pleasing story, because it is so sad, but it is a story that has its place in 2016. If I had time I wish I could see it, just even to support what they're doing.
2 comments:
I heard this story in junior year of high school in my history class and I remember being absolutely floored by it. I could not believe something so tragic happened to such a young man in the fifties. I was also absolutely proud of his mother making the decision to have an open casket funeral just to broadcast the brutality he was shown at the ending of his life. And while I don’t agree that this was the start of the Civil Rights Movement I do believe that it was a very necessary step in the rallying and organization of black people in the fifties and onwards. I have to say that I don’t like the way the article documents the event as him “whistling” at a white woman because the way I learned the event is that no one really knows how vulgar or direct he was with her, and with all the racial bias present in this time, I don’t think we’ll ever know.
This is so accurate that the same thing is happening now among black teens. I think its so important that this story be told in the current day and age to show that the context may have changed, but black young men, and women like SAndra Bland are still being killed.This killing was done by spiteful white boys in his visit to the south. The context was unclear of why the killing happened, similar to Trayvon Martin, but the outcome was very clear- it disturbed the nation and sparked civil rights protests. I've never really thought about how similar their tragic deaths were. Also, I'm proud of this theater, a local one too, having the guts to show this. It's not exactly a marketable or probably crowd-pleasing story, because it is so sad, but it is a story that has its place in 2016. If I had time I wish I could see it, just even to support what they're doing.
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