So Music, this is the muddy backwoods tallahatchie river, where a weighted body was found alleged to be that of young emmett dill. I saw a hole which i presumed was a bullet hole and i could look through that hole and see daylight on the other side and i wonder, was it necessary to shoot it here? Is money mississippi the home of roy bryant? It was here that the chicago negro boy, emmett till, is alleged to have paid unwelcome attention to rory bryant’s most attractive wife.
When white women’s was on the streets, you had to get off the street.
That was a way of life, and all a white woman would have to say was that kind of looked at me me, so we’re talking about a way of life that, in this part of the country that was enforced by law.
This was the home of moe’s wright.
It was from this shack.
The state alleges emmett till was taken by roy bryant and j w milom.
The house was as dark.
There’s a thousand midnight she couldn’t see it was like a nightmare.
I mean it’s, i mean someone come and stand over you with a pills in one hand, a flashlight, you’re, 16 years old.
This is a terrifying experience. Music.
The teal case held the whole system up for inspection by the rest of the country and by the rest of the world.
It was the beginning of the focusing on the problems between the races in the deep south that culminated in the ultimate civil rights battles of the of of the rest of the 50s and and into the 60s.
I think black people -‘s reaction – was so visceral and i think it was probably more than anything else in terms of the mass civil rights movement, the spark that launched it.
Everybody knew we were under attack and that attack was symbolized by the attack on a 14 year old boy Music when one drives through the lowest hills and looks out at the sweep of those fields below flat as a pancake.
As far as the eye can see it’s breathtaking those who have not been to the delta find themselves gasping at the site as they come over the lowest hills and see that expanse of flat agricultural land.
It was the summer of 1955 when emmett till arrived in mississippi from chicago.
His family had worked cotton for generations, but this trip would be emmett’s, introduction to the delta known as the most southern place on earth.
This is mississippi.
Today, a situation exists in mississippi. That is, unlike the situation in most states in the nation.
In some sections of the state, there is a preponderance of colored citizens.
This situation has brought problems.
It has created challenges, but most important of all.
It has inspired a social system to meet the challenge in every community.
In mississippi there is segregation of the races drinking fountains are segregated, restrooms are segregated, the local theater is segregated in any way said anything that they didn’t.
Like you, didn’t disagree with them on a whole.
You just didn’t do that.
If a white person did something to you, you had no recourse at all.
People disappeared. We don’t know what happened to them.
They just disappeared Music.
In the 75 years before emmett till set foot in mississippi, more than 500 black people had been lynched in the state.
Most were men who had been accused of associating with white women.
Music part of that culture was that the women were put on pedestals and they were some sort of uh idealization of of whatever it means to be a woman or to be female.
There was an almost uh, irrational fear of black men, uh, as if every black man was ready to attack or rape, a white woman.
If you gave him a chance, i can remember when my father died sammy the black man he worked for him.
Was there and i threw my arms around his neck and he pulled away from me.
He could not have that.
You know physical show of affection of sharing grief or whatever black men did not touch white women, Music, many white southerners, perhaps most deep south southerners, had convinced themselves that black people were relatively happy in their in their segregated relationships with white people, most white people. I think had had convinced themselves that this was a defensible social system in which they lived.
I had a cousin that was living in mississippi and was walking down.
The side walked down near downtown and tunica and didn’t get off the side, walking the man slapped him and knocked him off the sidewalk, and he got up instead of killing the white man like he wanted.
He just started walking and never stopped until he got to memphis and never stopped until he got up to chicago Music.
Hundreds of thousands of black people fled mississippi for chicago in the years between the world wars.
One way: train fare of 11 10 took them to a different world, neighborhoods and schools were segregated, but the city offered a kind of freedom.
Black mississippians could only dream about chicago was a land of promise and they thought that milk and honey was everywhere, and so it was a lot of excitement leaving the south leaving the cotton fields.
You could hold your head up in chicago Music.
Mamie carthan arrived in chicago at the age of two.
An only child. Young mamie was the hope of her family of former sharecroppers.
She graduated from high school at the top of her class and became one of the first black women in town to hold a civil service job in 1940 mamie married soldier louis till and one year later, their son emmett was born in 1945.
Mamie got word that private till had died in europe.
All she received of his possessions was a signet ring inscribed with his initials lt emmett.
Her only child was four years old.
Childhood case of polio left him with a stutter, but by the time he was a teenager, emmett till had grown into a cocky self assured boy who loved to be the center of attention.
When we first met, we went gym uh in mr long’s gym period.
I remember emmett raising his shirt up to about his navel and start making his belly roll just waves of fat rolling and it just broke us up.
I mean the whole gym went crazy.
He was that kind of kid anything going on. He’s in the middle of all of it and he just loved loved play ball.
He just loved jokes.
He would pay people to tell him jokes.
If there was a group there emmy was in front and he was the lively one.
He was the one that everybody kind of looked to, not your one leader, you .
