Racism: Kidnapped, mutilated, murdered at the age of 14 – and thrown into the river

2023-07-26 14:27:49

Culture Emmett Till

Kidnapped, mutilated, murdered at the age of 14 – and thrown into the river

Status: 27.07.2023 | Reading time: 3 minutes

Location of boy’s disfigured body

Source: Rogelio V. Solis/AP

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America is at a crossroads when it comes to remembrance policy: while the era of slavery is being whitewashed in Florida, more and more memorials are being erected across the country for the victims of racist violence. Now President Biden is dedicating three memorial sites to a particularly heinous case.

A war of memories has been raging in the United States since the end of the American Civil War. To understand, all you have to do is hop in the car and visit the world’s largest relief, dug into the rock of Stone Mountain, half an hour from Atlanta, Georgia. There three men ride oversized on their horses; their names are Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. You were the President of the “Confederate States of America”, the general in command of the Confederate troops and its ablest officer.

Four Confederate war flags fly in front of the relief, thirteen steps symbolize the thirteen states that rose up against the central government at the time to defend slavery. Does it need to be emphasized that this is a favorite spot of the Ku Klux Klan and of all American racists in general? Incidentally, the monstrosity was not inaugurated in the 19th century. Not even in the 1920s. But in 1970, by none other than the American Vice President at the time, Spiro Agnew.

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As the South put its racist heroes on pedestals, in the Northwest, statues of Lincoln and triumphal arches were erected in honor of the Union Army; the prettiest is at the entrance to Prospect Park in Brooklyn. And here the conflict remained virtually frozen until Donald Trump came to power. Suddenly, people in American cities — which have long been ethnically diverse, even in the South — were taking a closer look at who was galloping through their public squares on horseback in bronze. They often found out: They are all traitors to the fatherland who shot American soldiers in the fight for slavery. In America, the accusation of “cancel culture” was initially directed at the fact that such equestrian statues were overthrown by local city governments.

Thrown into the river like garbage

But what was to take the place of the fallen monuments? President Joe Biden has now signed an executive order dedicating three sites in America to memorials for Emmett Till: a church in Chicago, an airfield on the Mississippi River, a courthouse.

Bullet-riddled plaque commemorating the murdered youth at Graball Landing in Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, USA

Quelle: Pablo Correa/Emmett Till Interpretive Center/REUTERS

Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago visiting relatives in Mississippi. On the evening of August 24, 1955, a white woman who worked in a store accused him of molesting her. Three days later, her husband and his half-brother kidnapped the boy; they tortured him, murdered him and threw his corpse into the river like garbage. A month later the killers were on trial; and of course the jury, all white, acquitted her.

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Emmett Till’s mother then decided to put the coffin containing her boy’s body on public display. The images of Emmett Till’s mangled body also shocked many white Americans. The three memorials that Biden donated are: the landing pad on the river where the body disappeared into the water; the church in Chicago where the mourners gathered; the courthouse where the killers were acquitted.

Emmett Till was 14 when he died and was buried in an open coffin at his mother’s request

What: AP

This is the historic moment when America’s future will be decided: multiethnic democracy or autocratic rule by the white Christian minority? The controversy is decided in the dispute about the past: The governor of Florida has just decided that his state’s schools should teach that slaves learned many useful things during the slavery period. (In truth, the slaves were forced to perform bone-breaking farm labor on the plantations, and were forbidden, under pain of death, to seek higher education.) Biden’s decision to erect a memorial to Emmett Till, the victim of racism, is an attempt to to break a path to truth.