Roads and Rambles

The murder of Emmett Till -- Money, Mississippi

The crumbling, almost overgrown, wreck of a building in the photo above is the site where a story of the most extreme racial violence and injustice began to unfold in the summer of 1955:  the Bryant Grocery in Money, Mississippi.  In August of that year, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy from Chicago,  was lynched for supposedly "offending" a white woman there. Emmett was visiting relatives in Mississippi and had gone with his cousins to the grocery market, which was owned by Roy and Carolyn Bryant. Roy Bryant was out of town, and Carolyn Bryant was working the store. What happened between Emmett Till and Carolyn Bryant -- or if anything happened at all -- has never been clear, but he was accused of having spoken to her and grabbed her.  

Bryant Grocery in 1955

A few days after the encounter at the store, Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law John Milam showed up at the home of Emmett's grandfather in the middle of the night and demanded that the boy be brought out to them.  The two men kidnapped Emmett Till and beat him brutally, then shot him and threw his body into the Tallahatchie River.  

 

Such horrific lynchings were not uncommon, nor was it uncommon to such crimes to go unpunished. But, thanks largely to the actions of Emmett's mother, this case took hold in the public imagination, especially among African Americans. When Emmett Till's body was pulled from the river, he was unrecognizable -- between the beatings and the time in the river, his face and body were grotesquely distorted and bloated. He could be identified only because of his father's ring, which he wore. At Emmett's funeral, his mother, Ms. Mamie Till, insisted that his casket be left open, with his face in full view, in order to lay bare to the world what her son had suffered. Jet Magazine, an African American magazine sold nationwide, published photographs of Emmett's disfigured body, bringing the horror of the violence home to African Americans across the country. Many civil rights activists cite Emmett Till's murder as the turning point moment that led them to join the freedom movement.

While we were in Mississippi, Michael, Stone, and I visited the site of the Bryant grocery store, which is rapidly falling to pieces along a two-lane country highway. While there, I asked Michael and Stone to reflect on the Emmett Till murder and what it meant to them at the time.  

Michael was 10 years old in 1955 and living with his parents in Philadelphia, where he was born. Michael's recollection:

  

 

After filming Michael, I took  a minute to capture the scene on video:

  

 

Donald Stone, who was born and raised in Alabama, was 20 years old and living in New York at the time of Emmett Till's murder.  Stone's reflections:

  

 

As we were getting into the car, Michael was continuing to talk about the murder and the aftermath. I grabbed my camera and started recording, just to capture it on video. This was completely impromptu, so this video is a bit rougher than the others, but the content is equally good: 

  

 

As Stone mentions in his video, to add insult to injury, just four months after Emmett Till's murderers were acquitted, they sold their story to Look Magazine, which paid them $4000. In the story, they admitted openly to the killing.  

To read more about the case, I would recommend the excellent website of an American Experience (PBS) documentary on the Emmett Till case. The website includes a full transcript of the documentary, a timeline of events, and even a reprint of the Look Magazine article. 

"This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed"

After Indianola, we headed to Greenwood, Mississippi, to attend a book talk by former SNCC member and journalist Charles Cobb on his new book, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible. The book discusses the role that weapons and the acceptance of the notion of armed self-defense played within the civil rights movement.  The book talk was held at the Turnrow Book Company, an excellent little bookstore in the very pretty downtown of Greenwood which, judging by the number of signed books on its shelves, regularly hosts author events.  This particular event was also filmed by C-SPAN for BookTV (link goes to BookTV.org; will update to direct link to video of the event when available) and, although I didn't get a chance to ask my question, if you watch the video I think you'll hear Donald Stone and Michael Simmons ask the first questions. 

(That's Stone in the white baseball cap and Michael in the Panama hat.)

Church Street Festival

In contrast to the structural and visual depletion of Church St. (see previous post), the heart of the community beats as strong as ever in its people and relationships. Lots of families came out for the Church Street Festival, setting up tables and tents where they sold homemade food, drinks, and treats.  The welcome we received was as warm as family when we bought homemade lemonade and tea cakes from Miss Lizzie and her family, and hands down the best ribs I've ever had from the family set up next to them.

 

Meeting Miss Lizzie; Michael and Stone with Miss Lizzie

 

 

As we sat and enjoyed our food and drink, we chatted with Miss Lizzie and her family, surprising them all with how far we had traveled to get there from Philadelphia and, ultimately, Budapest. Miss Lizzie was the only one of her siblings who had never left Indianola, and we talked with her about what Church St. used to be. Miss Lizzie was accompanied by two of her six children, one daughter who had also been the only one in her generation never to leave Indianola, and another who had moved out of state but recently moved back home.  They made sure we were comfortable, kept our lemonade cups filled, and chatted with us like long lost friends. When we left we all got big hugs from Miss Lizzie and her daughters, who also insisted on getting photos with us.

Bottom line -- and I say this with full affection for my CT-NY-Philly-New England-Northeastern roots -- Southern people are nicer.

Church Street, Indianola

 

Church Street, Indianola, June 2014

Currently, the website of the Mississippi Freedom Summer commemoration we attended contains an online booklet of reflections on the "past and present" of Mississippi, headlined with the following quote from SNCC organizer Bob Moses:

When you are in Mississippi, the rest of America doesn't seem real; and when you are in the rest of America, Mississippi doesn't seem real.

After having spent a few days both in the capital and off the beaten path in Mississippi, I have to say that I feel that quote holds as true today as it ever did. For all the signs of the 21st century in Mississippi, at the same time it feels like it exists in another time and another place from the rest of the country. 

During our stay, we only spent part of our time at official conference activities. We also wanted to visit smaller towns and important civil rights movement sites in the state.  And it was through those side trips that we really got a sense of how much and how little has changed in Mississippi.

Our first side trip took us to Indianola and Greenwood, Mississippi. That weekend there was a festival on Church Street, which had been the center of the African American community in Indianola during the segregation era.  It was a lively, bustling avenue where the African American community could find everything it needed: shops, restaurants, doctors, cleaners. . . . It was all there on Church St. Today, however, Church St. is just one of many similar sites in many, many cities and towns (including Philadelphia), where the successes of the civil rights era have come with a bittersweet side effect: the death of these vibrant centers of African American community life. Church St. is barely a shell of its former self. Of the buildings left standing, few are not abandoned or crumbling. The surviving businesses, most of which are cafes or bars and most of which stand next to now-empty lots, still seem to see a steady enough activty, but to see Church St. today is to see but a faint echo of its former self.  

Church Street historical marker; White Rose Cafe; Cozy Corner Cafe

 

Text on the reverse side of the Church Street historical marker. Click to enlarge.

 

The main thing that draws most people from outside Mississippi to Indianola nowadays is the B.B. King Museum.  Indianola is B.B. King's hometown, and serious blues fans make the pilgrimage to see the museum and other sites related to B.B. King and other Mississippi blues musicians.  At the beginning of Church St., a historical marker stands at the street corner where B.B. King used to play as a young man.

Signs and artwork at the corner of Church St. commemorating B.B. King

Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th anniversary commemoration

This June was the 50th anniversary of the Mississippi Freedom Summer, the campaign organized by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in 1964 to recruit (mostly white) college students from the North to volunteer in the South during the summer. The students were there to organize for civil rights, but they were also there to help bring national attention to the abuses against African Americans in the South.  Several commemorations of the 50th anniversary have happened this year across the country, and we timed our trip to be able to attend an anniversary conference in Mississippi, held at Tougaloo College in Jackson from June 25th through June 29th. 

On our way to Mississippi, we had stopped in Snow Hill, Alabama, to pick up Michael's good friend Donald Stone. Michael and Stone both worked with SNCC (though not in Mississippi) and the conference offered an opportunity to reconnect with old colleagues and friends. 

Reunions galore

Michael with Bob Moses, the key SNCC organizer who made the political space for Black Mississippians to take their struggles to a national platform.

In addition to the standard conference agenda, the event included a book fair with authors of books on Mississippi civil rights movement topics and performances by the Freedom Singers.

The Freedom Singers perform; book fair authors with their books; Michael with Taylor Branch, whose three-volume history of Martin Luther King, Jr., is one of the best documents on the civil rights movement.

Also attending the conference was Dr. Robyn Spencer of Lehman College, who interviewed both Michael and Stone about their anti-war organizing.

Stone and Michael interview with Dr. Robyn Spencer

Mississippi 2014

Plenary panel at Mississippi Freedom Summer 50th Anniversary commemoration

We've just completed another long stay, this time in Mississippi, where we attended events commemorating the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, and visited some key towns and sites in the civil rights movement.  There is so much to write and share from this visit that it will take me a few days to catch up with it, so for now I'll just leave this here as a placeholder until I can write more.

In the meantime, we've since driven to New Orleans along a coastal route taking us right along Mississippi's Gulf of Mexico beaches.  Tomorrow, my first real day in New Orleans!

UPDATE/note to self:  I actually wrote the above on July 1st, having just arrived in New Orleans. However, I'm now back-dating this post in order to move it to the beginning of the Mississippi section, which will help keep my posts organized more or less in the order in which things happened.