baldeagle wrote:philip964 wrote:http://news.yahoo.com/1955-black-life-m ... 53062.html
Something to probably annoy you.
I don't know about 1955, but seems these other "victims" were not innocent babies. If this young man was truly innocent, then this editorial harms his memory. I somehow suspect history will be rewritten in school text books in 50 years to make the current thugs look like angels.
It "seems like"? Martin committed aggravated battery and paid with his life. Michael Brown committed aggravated battery on a police officer and then refused to obey lawful orders and paid for it with his life.
Jordan Davis was murdered by a man who didn't like his loud music. While completely wrong and very tragic, it does not compare to what happened to Emmett Till.
Emmett Till, a Chicago teenager, traveled to a small town in Mississippi with his mother to visit family. While there, Emmett, in the company of other young black men, went to the local store. When he spotted the owner's wife, he whistled at her. For that he was pistol whipped, tortured, beaten, shot and thrown in the river. His body had extensive cranial damage, a broken left femur, and two broken wrists. A .45 was buried in his skull.
Both Davis and Till were innocent of any crime but were murdered because they were black. That they have in common. But Till's death was ten times more heinous than Davis'.
The problem with the article is that the first paragraph is a bunch of lies, starting with the assertion that Martin was killed for "looking suspicious." These lies, the one about Martin alone, undermine the credibility of every other claim in the article. So, I looked it up, and as I suspected, there is a little more to the story than that Till whistled at white woman.
Let me make it clear, there is no justification for what was done to him, and as you say, his death was 10 times more heinous than Davis', but horrible as his torture and murder were,the Yahoo account deliberately trivializes what happened and leaves out other details....and he may or may not have whistled at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmett_Till
According to Jones, the other boys reported that Till had a photograph of an integrated class at the school he attended in Chicago,[note 1] and Till bragged to the boys that the white children in the picture were his friends. He pointed to a white girl in the picture, or referred to a picture of a white girl that had come with his new wallet,[21] and said she was his girlfriend. One or more of the local boys dared Till to speak to Bryant.[20]
The facts of what took place in the store are still disputed but according to several versions, including allegations from some of the kids standing outside the store when Till walked in,[22] Till may have wolf-whistled at Bryant.[23] A newspaper account following his disappearance stated that Till sometimes whistled to alleviate his stuttering.[24] His speech was sometimes unclear; his mother said he had particular difficulty with pronouncing "b" sounds, and may have whistled to overcome problems asking for bubble gum.[25] According to other stories, Till may have grabbed Bryant's hand and asked her for a date, or said "Bye, baby" as he left the store,[12] or "You needn't be afraid of me, baby, I've been with white women before."[26]
Bryant testified during the murder trial that Till had made sexual advances and asked her for a date.[27] In her testimony, Bryant alleged that Till grabbed her hand while she was stocking candy and said, "How about a date, baby?"[27] She said that after she freed herself from his grasp, the young man followed her to the cash register,[27] grabbed her waist and said, "What's the matter baby, can't you take it?"[27] Bryant then allegedly freed herself, and Till told her, "You needn't be afraid of me, baby,"[27] used "one 'unprintable' word"[27] and said "I've been with white women before."[27] Bryant also alleged that one of Till's companions came into the store, grabbed him by the arm and ordered him to leave.[27]
Till's cousin, Simeon Wright, writing about the incident decades later, challenged Carolyn Bryant's account.[28] Entering the store "less than a minute" after Till was left inside alone with Bryant,[28] Wright saw no inappropriate behavior and heard "no lecherous conversation."[28] Wright said Till "paid for his items and we left the store together."[28] The FBI also noted in their 2006 investigation of the incident that a second anonymous source, who was confirmed to have been in the store at the same time as Till and his cousin, backed this claim as well.[21]
In any event, Bryant was so alarmed she ran outside to a car to retrieve a pistol from under the seat. Upon seeing her do this, the teenagers left immediately.[26] It was also acknowledged that while Bryant was running to her car, Till whistled.[21] However, it is disputed whether Till whistled towards Carolyn or towards a checkers game that was occurring just across the street.[21]
So, we don't know what really happened because there were no witnesses to what Till actually said or did except Bryant, the woman who claimed he did more than whistle. Wright is hardly objective and Bryant had plenty of reason to lie about what happened when her husband was being tried for murder.
Furthermore, while there was virulent racism in the period it's not quite so simple as the article would have us believe that all racist whites cynically let a couple good ole' boys get away with murder:
The prosecution was criticized for dismissing any potential juror who knew Milam or Bryant, for the fear that such a juror would vote to acquit. Afterward, Whitaker noted that this was a mistake as anyone who had personally known the defendants usually disliked them.[26][71] One juror voted twice to convict, but on the third discussion, acquiesced and voted with the rest of the jury to acquit.[73] In later interviews, the jurors acknowledged that they knew Bryant and Milam were guilty, but simply did not believe life imprisonment or the death penalty fit punishment for whites who had killed a black man.[74] This is somewhat disputed by later interviews with two jurors who stated as late as 2005 that they believed the defense's case, that the prosecution had not proven that Till had died, and that it was his body that was removed from the river.
Finally, once these guys had gotten away with it and admitted to killing Till they weren't exactly embraced by the community:
After Bryant and Milam admitted to killing Till in their interview, their support base eroded in Mississippi.[89] Many of their former friends and supporters, including those who had contributed to their defense funds, cut them off. Their shops went bankrupt and closed after blacks boycotted them, and banks refused them loans to plant crops.[26] After struggling to secure a loan and find someone who would rent to him, Milam managed to secure 217 acres and a $4,000 loan to plant cotton, but blacks refused to work for him, and he was forced to pay whites higher wages.[90] Eventually, Milam and Bryant relocated to Texas, but their infamy followed them, and they continued to receive extreme animosity from locals. After several years, they returned to Mississippi.[note 9] Milam found work as a heavy equipment operator, but ill health forced him into retirement. Over the years, Milam was tried for offenses such as assault and battery, writing bad checks, and using a stolen credit card. He died of spinal cancer in 1980, at the age of 61.[91]
Bryant worked as a welder while in Texas, until increasing blindness forced him to give up this employment. At some point, he and Carolyn divorced; he remarried in 1980. He opened a store in Ruleville, Mississippi and was convicted in 1984 and 1988 of food stamp fraud. In a 1985 interview, he denied that he had killed Till, but said: "if Emmett Till hadn't got out of line, it probably wouldn't have happened to him." Fearing economic boycotts and retaliation, Bryant lived a private life and refused to allow himself to be photographed or reveal the exact location of his store, explaining: "this new generation is different and I don't want to worry about a bullet some dark night".[92] He died of cancer in 1994, at the age of 63
