EMMETT TILL AUGUST 28-1955

 Murphy Browne © Tuesday, August 26, 2014 

 

REMEMBERING EMMETT TILL 59 YEARS LATER! AUGUST 28 - 1955 - AUGUST 28 – 2014 

“Over fifty-two years ago, on August 28, 1955, 14–year–old Emmett Till was kidnapped in the middle of the night from his uncle’s home near Money, Mississippi, by at least two men, one from Leflore County and one from Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. Till, a black youth from Chicago visiting family in Mississippi, was kidnapped and murdered, and his body thrown into the Tallahatchie River. He had been accused of whistling at a white woman in Money. His badly beaten body was found days later in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. We the citizens of Tallahatchie County recognize that the Emmett Till case was a terrible miscarriage of justice. We state candidly and with deep regret the failure to effectively pursue justice. We wish to say to the family of Emmett Till that we are profoundly sorry for what was done in this community to your loved one. We the citizens of Tallahatchie County acknowledge the horrific nature of this crime. Its legacy has haunted our community. We need to understand the system that encouraged these events and others like them to occur so that we can ensure that it never happens again. Working together, we have the power now to fulfill the promise of “liberty and justice for all.” 

Excerpt from the 2007 official apology to the family of Emmett Till from Tallahatchie County, Mississippi. (http://www.etmctallahatchie.com/images/resolution.gif) 

On Sunday, August 28, 1955, at 2:30 a.m. the family of African American tenant farmer Moses Wright of East Money, Mississippi was rudely awakened to the sound of loud banging on their front door. When 64-year-old Moses Wright opened his door he was confronted by 2 armed White men, 24 year old Roy Bryant and his 36 year old half-brother John William “JW” Milam. The White men demanded entry into Wright’s home to search for his 14-year-old great nephew Emmett Till who they accused of “whistling” at a White woman. Apparently the 14-year-old Till from Chicago did not know that even “looking White people in the eye” was a capital offence for which African Americans in the southern states were routinely lynched. Emmett Till affectionately called “Bobo” or “Bo” by family and friends born July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois the only child of Mamie Till had celebrated his 14th birthday barely 4 weeks before the horrific unfolding of August 28, 1955. 

In spite of the desperate entreaty of Moses Wright and his wife to spare the child’s life the 2 White men entered the bedroom where the 14-year-old Till was sleeping and using a large flash light searched the room waking the occupants. They demanded that Till get dressed before kidnapping him at gunpoint (colt .45 automatic) and bundling him into a car where he was identified by 21 year old Carol Bryant as the “offender” who had “whistled” at her 4 days before on August 24, 1955. 

On August 31, 1955, three days after the 14-year-old was kidnapped from his great uncle’s house, Till’s horribly disfigured nude body with a 70 pound industrial fan fastened around his neck with barbed wire was taken out of the Tallahatchie River. The 14-year-old had been so brutally beaten and tortured that his face was unrecognizable where he had been shot above the right ear, his nose broken and his right eye gouged out. Surprisingly for that time and place there was a trial where not surprisingly Bryant and Milam were acquitted of the murder of Till. A few months later both murderers gave an interview published in Look Magazine (January 24, 1956) where they boasted of committing the heinous crime against Till. The article entitled “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi” was written by White American journalist William Bradford Huie. 

In the 2004 published book “Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America” Mamie Till Mobley wrote this about the morning of that fateful Sunday August 28, 1955: “That call. Early Sunday morning. August 28, 1955. I can never forget that call. And I had so many questions to ask. What men? Why had they come? Where had they taken my boy? What was being done about it? Emmett was missing. Missing in Mississippi. Oh my God. Oh, dear Lord, no. Please no. Don’t let this be happening. The thing I feared most, the thing that had made me take so long to even think about letting Bo make the trip, the thing that kept me immobilized all week long, the most horrible thing any mother could possibly imagine was becoming a reality. I tried to fight back all the things, all the visions that were playing out in my mind. I tried to deny all the things that I could not allow myself to accept.” 

(http://www.biography.com/people/emmett-till-507515#synopsis)  

I first saw the photograph of the horrifically mutilated face of Emmett Till in an old Ebony Magazine when I was a small child. As a child it made no sense to me looking at the smiling face of the 14-year-old and the grotesquely mutilated face in the coffin that it was the same person or that he was tortured and killed for whistling at someone. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAemBpFM1NI) As an adult I have often wondered if the Bryant/Milam folks went to church right after that savagely murderous attack on a defenseless, unarmed 14 year old or did they go home and change clothes first. After all this lynching did take place in Mississippi right in the heart of White America’s “Bible Belt” where White people prided themselves on their adherence to the Christian faith. It was Sunday so as God fearing Christians at some point they would have gone to church. The news would have spread swiftly in Money, Mississippi so everyone would know that the “uppity Negro” from Chicago had been taken care of. Were the Bryant/Milam clan welcomed in church with smiles and congratulations on a job well done accompanied by much back slapping? 

 

It was Mamie Till’s determination that prevented her son’s body being buried in Mississippi where no one would have seen the evidence of the savage, barbaric White supremacist culture which permitted and condoned his murder. Instead she fought the system including the sheriff and other Mississippi politicians insisting that her son’s body be returned to Chicago where the world could see what Bryant, Milam and White supremacy had done to her child. In an interview just before she transitioned in 2003 Till Mobley spoke about the day she saw her child’s body: "I looked at the bridge of his nose and it looked like someone had taken a meat chopper and chopped it. And I looked at his teeth because I took so much pride in his teeth. His teeth were the prettiest things I'd ever seen in my life, I thought. And I only saw two. Well, where are the rest of them? They had just been knocked out. And I was looking at his ears, and that's when I discovered a hole about here and I could see daylight on the other side. I said, 'Now, was it necessary to shoot him?'"   

 

In many circles the lynching of 14-year-old Till is considered the spark that lit the Civil Rights Movement. When Rosa Parks refuted the story that she was tired on December 1, 1955, as the reason she refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama bus she said: “I thought of Emmett Till, and when the bus driver ordered me to move to the back, I just couldn’t move.” This quote is immortalized on a marker that was erected in remembrance of Till on May 18, 2011, in front of the store where Till allegedly whistled at a White woman. In 2014 there is America’s first African American President who must be very cognizant of the fact that if he had been born in 1950s Mississippi as an African American male, he could have suffered the same fate as Emmett Till. On August 9, 2014, with the killing of Michael Brown the President must be considering himself very fortunate that he lives in the White House and not in Ferguson, Missouri. Maybe that is why he has not yet visited that beleaguered community where White police seem to be reliving the pre- Civil Rights days! 

 

Murphy Browne © Tuesday, August 26, 2014 

 

AUGUST 1-2021 EMANCIPATION DAY IN CANADA

EMANCIPATION DAY IN CANADA 2021 

 

Murphy Browne © July 31-2021 

 

 

The Canadian Members of Parliament earlier this year voted unanimously in the House of Commons to designate August 1 as Emancipation Day across Canada. One hundred and eighty-seven years ago on Friday, August 1, 1834, enslaved Africans in Canada and elsewhere in the British Empire were freed from chattel slavery. While the enslaved Africans in Canada, Antigua and Barbuda were immediately freed on August 1, 1834, the enslaved Africans in the other British colonized Caribbean islands, British Honduras in Central America and British Guiana in South America were informed that they had to endure up to a further six years (domestic workers 4 years and field workers 6) of semi-slavery before they would finally be free. A six year “apprenticeship period” began where Africans were forced to continue providing unpaid labour that enriched White people. The “apprentices” were compelled to remain on the plantations of their former “owners” and provide free labour for 40 hours a week. This was a different form of slavery. The plantation owners, compensated for the loss of their “property,” continued to gain from the unpaid labour of the Africans on their plantations during this “apprenticeship” period. The white overseers and the plantation owners continued to abuse the “emancipated” Africans.  

The enslavement of Africans for more than four hundred years has been recognized by the United Nations as a crime against humanity. This was a crime against Africans because they were the people kidnapped and forcibly taken away from their homeland, their families, to provide unpaid labour that enriched Europeans. In 1834, with the anticipated freedom not becoming a reality, the Africans in the “British dominions” did not hesitate to express their dissatisfaction. 

On Friday, August 1, 1834, a group of angry Africans entered Port-of-Spain and gathered in front of Government House which was housed on the upper floor of the Treasury and Rum Bond building. Governor George Fitzgerald Hill sent the militia out to intimidate the group, but the furious Africans stood their ground determined to be heard. Despite the presence of the militia, the protest continued until night when the protesters strategically withdrew because they were not allowed to be in the town during the night. The following day, Saturday August 2, the group of protesters was back at Government House in Port-of-Spain. Governor Hill sent the militia to arrest the protesters who refused to return to the plantations. The furious Africans scuffled with the militia, resisting arrest. Some of the protesting Africans were arrested, tried, sentenced to hard labour and flogging then taken to the Royal Jail. Their incensed compatriots were forced to flee but returned on the Monday to continue the protest. The numbers had swollen by Monday and there were more clashes with the militia. Some of the people who were arrested on the Monday were publicly flogged in Marine Square. These protests continued the entire week. 

 

Similar scenarios were enacted in other British colonies. On Saturday, August 9, 1834, several Africans on plantations in Essequibo, (Guyana) between Richmond and Devonshire Castle, went on strike. Led by Damon, an “apprentice” from Richmond, they gathered in the Holy Trinity churchyard at La Belle Alliance where they flew a red flag to symbolize their freedom. There was no violence involved in this demonstration. However, this show of independence was swiftly and brutally suppressed. The governor ordered Damon arrested and on Monday, August 11, he was taken to Georgetown where he was later tried on a charge of rebellion and found guilty. Damon was hanged on October 13, 1834, on special gallows facing what is now the Parliament Building. Several of the other striking “apprentices” were transported to New South Wales, while others were flogged and imprisoned. Today a monument in Damon’s honour stands at Damon Park in Anna Regina, Essequibo. 

 

On August 11th, 1834, Lord Rolle an absentee plantation owner, with plantations in the Bahamas, wrote a letter of complaint to the colonial secretary from his home in Devonshire, Britain. He had received information from his lawyer that the “apprentices” on his plantation, even though “severely beaten and bruised” were refusing to work unless compelled to do so by the presence of soldiers. On September 13, 1834, acting Governor Blayney Balfour wrote to London that he had to send troops to Exuma three times that year because of “insubordination” of the “apprentices” on Lord Rolle’s estate. He had to eventually have a detachment permanently stationed on the island. 

The plantation owners received reparations for the loss of their property due to emancipation. The British government paid the plantation owners 20 million pounds an amount which is estimated to be the equivalent of 200 billion pounds today. The British government has resisted calls for reparations to be made to the descendants of enslaved Africans whose ancestors’ blood, sweat, tears and coerced unpaid labour enriched generations of White people who continue to enjoy those riches into the 21st century. There is evidence that the British and other European tribes benefited financially from the slave trade. Although the British did not begin the trade in Africans (the Portuguese began this barbaric trade, quickly followed by the Spanish and other European tribes) it was the British who almost monopolized this dreadful system for centuries supported by the British monarchy. In his 1973 published book, “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa” Guyanese historian, Dr. Walter Rodney wrote: “Some attempts have been made to try and quantify the actual monetary profits made by Europeans from engaging in the slave trade. The actual dimensions are not easy to fix, but the profits were fabulous. John Hawkins made three trips to West Africa in the 1560s and stole Africans whom he sold to the Spanish in America. On returning to England after the first trip, his profit was so handsome that Queen Elizabeth I became interested in directly participating in his next venture and she provided for that purpose a ship named the Jesus. Hawkins left with the Jesus to steal some more Africans, and he returned to England with such dividends that Queen Elizabeth made him a knight. Hawkins chose as his coat of arms the representation of an African in chains.” 

 

In Canada where slavery was abolished on August 1, 1834, there is a lack of recognition that Africans were enslaved here. Many Canadians do not know that Africans were enslaved in Canada beginning in 1628 with the sale of a 6-year-old African child who was given the name Olivier LeJeune by his enslavers. He was kidnapped from the African continent and sold by English pirate David Kirke to French colonizers in Quebec. The lives of enslaved Africans are not well documented, except for a few like Peggy Pompadour and her children Amy, Jupiter and Milly who were owned by Peter Russell (acting Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada 1796–1799) and his sister Elizabeth. Marie Joseph Angelique who was hanged in Montreal on June 21, 1734, is probably the most well-known because of Dr. Afua Cooper’s 2006 published book “The Hanging of Angelique.” Africans were enslaved throughout Canada and the many advertisements for buying and selling Africans as well as for their capture and return to their enslavers are documented in the Canadian publications of the time. 

 

Usually when we hear about slavery in Canada it is about enslaved Africans running to Canada from the USA. However, many enslaved Africans in Canada fled to Vermont in the USA where slavery had been abolished on July 2, 1777, fifty-seven years before slavery was abolished in Canada. That was the Underground railroad going south. 

The transatlantic slave trade caused the deaths of millions of African people and their descendants. Many lost their lives as resistance fighters, during long treks to slave ships, or from savage and inhumane abuse during the journey across the Atlantic. It is estimated that over 2 million Africans died during that journey.  

Enslaved Africans and their descendants were forced to work in fields, do manual labour and domestic work in the homes of enslavers without pay. They were forced to change their names, abandon their faiths and their cultures, stop speaking their languages and other indignities. The enslaved Africans were exposed to the most brutal forms of torture and abuse, all enforced by law. Family members were sold away from each other. 

August 1, Emancipation Day was the end of chattel slavery for Africans in Canada and the day has been celebrated for more than a century in Canada as well as in other former British colonies. African Canadian communities have commemorated Emancipation Day since the 1800s including African Canadian communities in the towns of Windsor, Owen Sound, Amherstburg, Sandwich in Ontario and provinces including New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. 

One of the few books on that subject, “Emancipation Day: Celebrating Freedom in Canada” was published in 2010 by Natasha Henry, educator and President of the “Ontario Black History Society.”  

On August 1, Canadians are invited to reflect, educate, learn and engage in the ongoing fight against anti-Black racism and discrimination. Emancipation Day celebrates the strength and perseverance of African Canadian communities in Canada. 

 

Murphy Browne © July 31-2021