Emmett Till Never Even Whistled

[MalcolmNewton]

isn't the lying harlot still alive? maybe send her to jail for the rest of her life.

 

[MalcolmNewton]

how about they reopen trayvon case
sean bell
mike brown
oscar grant

I keep waiting for someone to run Zimmerman over with a steamroller, I don't know what's taking so long.

 

[the natural mystic]

for her remaining year or 2 she got left on earth

I'll take it.

 

[nawghtyhare]

I keep waiting for someone to run Zimmerman over with a steamroller, I don't know what's taking so long.

folks is p
let it be a black guy
who did that to a white kid
he wouldnt be safe anywhere in this country
cause white folks woulda been at him

 

[hand2handking]

Government Probing ‘New Information’ in Emmett Till Slaying
The Justice Department told Congress in a report in March that it is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after receiving “new information.”

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — The federal government has reopened its investigation into the slaying of Emmett Till, the black teenager whose brutal killing in Mississippi shocked the world and helped inspire the civil rights movement more than 60 years ago.

The Justice Department told Congress in a report in March that it is reinvestigating Till’s slaying in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after receiving “new information.” The case was closed in 2007 with authorities saying the suspects were dead; a state grand jury didn’t file any new charges.

Deborah Watts, a cousin of Till’s, said she was unaware the case had been reopened until contacted Wednesday by The Associated Press.

The federal report, sent annually to lawmakers under a law that bears Till’s name, does not indicate what the new information might be.

But it was issued in late March after the publication last year of “The Blood of Emmett Till,” a book that says a key figure in the case acknowledged lying about events preceding the slaying of the 14-year-old youth from Chicago.

A Mississippi prosecutor declined comment Thursday on whether federal authorities had given him new information since they reopened the probe.

“It’s probably always an open case until all the parties have passed away,” said District Attorney Dewayne Richardson, whose circuit includes the community where Till was abducted.

Richardson said if a case were to move forward, he and the district attorney in the county where Till’s body was found could decide who would prosecute it.

The book, by Timothy B. Tyson, quotes a white woman, Carolyn Donham, as acknowledging during a 2008 interview that she wasn’t truthful when she testified that Till grabbed her, whistled and made sexual advances at a store in 1955.

Two white men — Donham’s then-husband, Roy Bryant, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam — were charged with murder but acquitted in the slaying of Till, who had been staying with relatives in northern Mississippi at the time. The men later confessed to the crime in a magazine interview but weren’t retried. Both are now dead.

Donham, who turns 84 this month, lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. A man who came to the door at her residence declined to comment about the FBI reopening the investigation.

“We don’t want to talk to you,” the man said before going back inside.

Paula Johnson, co-director of an academic group that reviews unsolved civil rights slayings, said she can’t think of anything other than Tyson’s book that could have prompted the Justice Department to reopen the Till investigation.

“We’re happy to have that be the case so that ultimately or finally someone can be held responsible for his murder,” said Johnson, who leads the Cold Case Justice Initiative at Syracuse University.

The Justice Department declined to comment on the status of the investigation.

The government has investigated 115 cases involving 128 victims under the “cold case” law named for Till, the report said. Only one resulted in in a federal conviction since the act became law, that of Ku Klux Klansman James Ford Seale for kidnapping two black teenagers, Charles Moore and Henry Dee, who were killed in Mississippi in 1964. At least 109 of the investigations have been closed, the report said.

State prosecutions assisted by federal authorities have resulted in additional convictions, most recently when a one-time Alabama state trooper was convicted of shooting a black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, during a protest in 1965. Jackson’s slaying was an impetus for the Selma-to-Montgomery voting rights march later that year.

Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, said it’s “wonderful” her cousin’s killing is getting another look, but she didn’t want to discuss details.

“None of us wants to do anything that jeopardizes any investigation or impedes, but we are also very interested in justice being done,” she said.

Abducted from the home where he was staying, Till was beaten and shot, and his body was found weighted down with a cotton gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. His mother, Mamie Till, had his casket left open. Images of his mutilated body gave witness to the depth of racial hatred in the Deep South and helped build momentum for subsequent civil rights campaigns.

Relatives of Till pushed Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reopen the case last year after publication of the book.

Donham, then 21 years old and known as Carolyn Bryant, testified in 1955 as a prospective defense witness in the trial of Bryant and Milam. With jurors out of the courtroom, she said a “****** man” she didn’t know took her by the arm.

“Just what did he say when he grabbed your hand?” defense attorney Sidney Carlton asked, according to a trial transcript released by the FBI a decade ago.

“He said, ‘How about a date, baby?’” she testified. Bryant said she pulled away, and moments later the young man “caught me at the cash register,” grasping her around the waist with both hands and pulling her toward him.

“He said, ‘What’s the matter baby, can’t you take it?’” she testified. Bryant also said he told her “you don’t need to be afraid of me,” claiming that he used an obscenity and mentioned something he had done “with white women before.”

A judge ruled the testimony inadmissible. An all-white jury freed her husband and the other man even without it. Testimony indicated a woman might have been in a car with Bryant and Milam when they abducted Till, but no one else was ever charged.

In the book, author Tyson wrote that Donham told him her testimony about Till accosting her wasn’t true.

“Nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him,” the book quotes her as saying.

Sen. Doug Jones, D-Alabama, introduced legislation this week that would make the government release information about unsolved civil rights killings. In an interview, Jones said the Till killing or any other case likely wouldn’t be covered by this legislation if authorities were actively investigating.

“You’d have to leave it to the judgment of some of the law enforcement agencies that are involved or the commission that would be created” to consider materials for release, Jones said.

 

[Bend_The_Knee]

Watch the woman who lied get charged, then claims she has Alzheimer's or something, then dies a week later.

 

[Brownstone]

Indifferent to this. Justice was not served. Everyone lives their life while this kid was slain before high school legally.

 

[Nawzlew]

how about they reopen trayvon case
sean bell
mike brown
oscar grant

5th Amendment.

I think?

 

[hand2handking]

Inspired by Emmett Till, New St. Paul Play Looks for Hope After 'Monstrous Violence'
The second play in a trilogy inspired by Emmett Till, "Benevolence" looks for hope after racial violence.

ELIZABETH FLORES • LIZ.FLORES@STARTRIBUNE.COM

“Benevolence,” part of a trilogy by playwright Ifa Bayeza about lynching victim Emmett Till, will have its world premiere Thursday at the Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul. Dame Jasmine Hughes and Darrick Mosley star as Beulah and Clinton Melton, a couple who became little-known martyrs in the aftermath of Till’s killing.

Before Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland and Philando Castile — African-Americans whose deaths sparked protests and generated hashtags — there was Emmett Till. Long before the social media age, Till’s killing helped ignite the civil rights movement and continues to inspire artists today.

In the summer of 1955, Till, a boisterous 14-year-old from Chicago, was visiting relatives in Money, Miss., when he was lynched for allegedly touching a white store clerk’s hand and wolf-whistling at her. The brutality of his killing may never have been known — he was tortured, shot and dumped in a river, his body weighted down by a cotton-gin fan tied to his neck with barbed wire — except that his mother opted for an open casket at the funeral.

Jet magazine published a funerary photograph of Till’s body, his face mutilated and swollen beyond comprehension. That disturbing image was seen by millions of people, including a young Ifa Bayeza, who grew up to become a successful Harvard-educated playwright.

The photo frightened and traumatized Bayeza — she saw the republished image in 1965, when she was around Till’s age. But she couldn’t fully process her emotions until late adulthood, she said. That’s when she decided to research Till’s killing and write a trilogy about the boy in whom she recognized glimmers of herself.

“We were both fair-skinned African-Americans with hazel eyes, so I could identify with him on a really personal level,” Bayeza said. “He exudes this warmth from the [non-death] photographs.”

The first play of the trilogy, “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” premiered at Chicago’s Goodman Theatre in 2008 and received a spirited 2014 staging at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre by director Talvin Wilks. Wilks also helms the world premiere of “Benevolence,” the last of the trilogy but the second play to come to the stage when it opens Thursday at Penumbra.

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Emmett Louis Till, a 14-year-old boy, was tortured and murdered in 1955 after he allegedly whistled at a white woman in Mississippi.

“In ‘The Ballad,’ Ifa focused on Emmett as a vibrant adolescent, so that we’re not trapped in the idea of Emmett as an eternal victim,” Wilks said. “In ‘Benevolence,’ she’s indicting the culture and world where this type of monstrous violence can happen as part of daily practice. And she’s asking us, what do we do with history like this, especially when it keeps recurring.”

Couples in The Aftermath

If “Ballad” was about humanizing Till, “Benevolence” is about showing the impact and devastation wrought by racial violence. With characters based on real people, the new play takes us inside the daily lives of two couples as they try to carry on in the aftermath of Till’s killing. But the story that’s told, based on research using court transcripts, FBI reports and interviews conducted by the playwright, is one of “conjecture,” said Bayeza, a brilliant writer in her own right, though her older sister, the late Ntozake Shange, is better known.

Carolyn and Roy Bryant, the white couple, are pivotal figures in Till’s death. An adult store clerk, she’s the one who accused the 14-year-old Chicagoan of flirting while she worked at the family’s convenience store. Her husband, shrimp-boat worker Roy, joined with his half-brother, J.W. Milam, in killing Till. Both were acquitted at trial, protecting them from any legal consequences when they later confessed to the killing.

Beulah and Clinton Melton, the black couple, were ordinary folks who became little-known civil rights martyrs in the wake of the acquittals. Clinton, a father of four who worked as an auto mechanic and gas station attendant, was shot dead on Dec. 3, 1955, by Elmer Kimbell, a friend of Milam’s. Less than three weeks later, Beulah, a churchgoing seamstress, was run off the road while driving her children. She drowned in a bayou, leaving their children orphaned.

“The play is an attempt to answer the question of what do we do with this history,” Bayeza said. “We have so much of it, and we’ve never had a Truth and Reconciliation Commission like they had in South Africa. We don’t really deal with it, but there’s a tradition in the African-American community of forgiveness, for our own health.”

Case Reopened

In 2007, a historian published a book claiming Carolyn Bryant Donham had confessed to lying about the case. Last July, the Justice Department notified Congress that it had reopened the case, 63 years later.

Playwright Bayeza does not deal with the later history, including Bryant’s confession.

“Carolyn Bryant’s admission that she lied — that was obvious to me from the beginning,” Bayeza said. “That’s the reason I wrote ‘Benevolence.’ I think it’s much more interesting to postulate how this story of hers, the lying, came into being.”

Invoking the Scottsboro Boys and the Central Park Five, Bayeza said that lies like Bryant’s have a peculiar power to destroy black lives and communities. But beyond ugly racial history, the play lands amid a moment of uncertainty about the very idea of definitive truth.

“We’re in a weird period of history where public fabrication is on such an upswing,” Bayeza said. “I fear there’s a permanent damage to our notion of truth — the idea that one can get to a truth that is sure, that truth can be verified, agreed upon and accepted.”

But there’s the unquestionable fact of that photo from Till’s funeral, which so disturbed Bayeza as a child. She still carries it like a wound, though it’s not as raw as it once was. Bayeza looks back with wonder and introspection at her formative years in New Jersey, at the impact that Till’s death had on her young self.

“You have to understand I was a very sensitive child,” she said. “I experienced the death of a classmate at 9, and took myself to the funeral not knowing any of the rituals. I followed people up the aisle of the church, not knowing that it was for a viewing for this child who had drowned, and you could still see the furrows of pain on his brow.”

That personal experience, plus ones from the larger culture — including the bombing that killed four little girls in Birmingham, and the violence as kids integrated schools — made Bayeza and her siblings feel “acutely vulnerable.”

“We were on the front lines of integrating schools and we were living in this moment that showed the perilousness of black life,” Bayeza said. “Emmett is a symbol of that perilousness. His death is also something we have to grapple with” lest his funeral picture becomes a mirror, and we become as distorted as his tortured face.

That’s not the image, or the notion, that Bayeza wants to leave.

“We have to do something with this history, and not just repeat it,” she said. “It’s not going away.”

 

[hand2handking]

 

[ggarvinxx3]

Great find