Accuser of Emmit Till Dies

Remy said:
Wow. I don't know what happens but I wonder what her consequence is.
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What happened is she made an accusation against that 14 year old boy and some White men beat him to death because of it. He was beaten so badly that he was unrecognizable. Despite the horrible condition his body was in, his mother chose to have an open casket so the world could see what was done to her son. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia about the murder.
"August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights" Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
 
Amelia B said:
Bryant and Milam, the actual murderers, are not often mentioned. I wonder what punishment they should receive in the afterlife?
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A reasonable question. Actually I believe they were more guilty than she. The false accusations were awful and I won't defend her, however they were just words and she may not have completely understood what the consequences of those words would be.

The actual murderers however were fully aware of the consequences of beating and then shooting a boy.

One of the tragedies of our country that this happened, and equally bad that none of these people faced legal consequences for what they did. Unfortunately there were too many events like this... Times have changed, injustice isn't gone but I hope things are better.
 
Alligatorob said:
A reasonable question. Actually I believe they were more guilty than she. The false accusations were awful and I won't defend her, however they were just words and she may not have completely understood what the consequences of those words would be.

The actual murderers however were fully aware of the consequences of beating and then shooting a boy.

One of the tragedies of our country that this happened, and equally bad that none of these people faced legal consequences for what they did. Unfortunately there were too many events like this... Times have changed, injustice isn't gone but I hope things are better.
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Exactly! She mouthed off and all they needed to say was something like ‘he’s just a kid calm down’, but instead they killed him so they are way more guilty.
 
Amelia B said:
She mouthed off and all they needed to say was something like ‘he’s just a kid calm down’,
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I am not offering any kind of defense, there is none for what she or the men did.

I think Emmett unknowingly violated one of the strongest Jim Crow rules of the time, black men were not to flirt with, or similarly engage white women. He was a 14 year old kid from Chicago visiting Mississippi on vacation, he probably did not know the local unwritten rules. I suspect he probably did flirt or whistle, harmlessly. He had every right to do that, even if it was unwanted, but its just not something done in the 1950s in Mississippi.

I think that makes it more likely the woman would have known her words might have dire consequences.

I am very glad that has mostly changed. Again I am not defending what she or the men did, to the contrary I think they should have been prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But that just wasn't going to happen in 50s Mississippi. I grew up in that environment and remember it well.

My great grandfather participated in a lynching around 1900. His guilt feelings and conscience eventually lead to his own suicide over it, but the law never did a thing...
 
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OneEyedDiva said:
What happened is she made an accusation against that 14 year old boy and some White men beat him to death because of it. He was beaten so badly that he was unrecognizable. Despite the horrible condition his body was in, his mother chose to have an open casket so the world could see what was done to her son. This is an excerpt from Wikipedia about the murder.
"August 28, 1955) was a 14-year-old African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and lynched in Mississippi in 1955, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the civil rights" Full article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
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Good For his mother, Mamie, for insisting on an open casket funeral so people throughout the US could see the abominations that were taking place. She helped change the face of history. She was an amazing woman.
 
For anyone who thinks only the two men who actually killed Emmett Till were guilty, the woman who started all of this sat lovingly by her husband during the court proceedings. She knew exactly what her actions caused. It was said that she later recanted her story. Sorry, but good riddance.
 
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