Written by Michael Thervil
"Till" on Amazon.com
During the weekend we had the opportunity to catch up on some much-needed leisure time by watching the 2022 biofilm entitled “Till” on Netflix. If you’re unfamiliar with the circumstances surrounding Emmett Till; he was a 14-year-old Black American boy from Chicago Illinois who was reluctantly sent down to vacation with his relatives during the summer of 1955 in the American South (Greenwood Mississippi) while racial tensions were extremely high in the United States. Emmett Till was a Black American boy who was accused by allegedly not only whistling at an American White Woman by the name of Caroline Bryant; but sexually assaulting her as well. Emmett Till was then taken from his residence in Mississippi in the middle of the night by two American White Men (Roy Bryant [husband] and John Milan [husbands’ half-brother]). He was then physically tortured and killed. Roy, John, and Caroline Bryant who later confessed to falsely accusing Emmett Till of whistling at her as a White Woman and being sexually assaulted which led to his murder were never convicted of murder or perjury under American Law.
Photos of Emmett Till in his open casket at his funeral
Although this is a very grotesque crime, which ran rampant through the United States during the before, up to and even after the period of “Jim Crow” can be seen as a testament to atrocities American Black People faced in the U.S. But that is not our issue. Our issue deals with the fact that American Black Men appear to have not only failed Emmett Till but made the mistake of thinking that they could legislate justice and equality for Black Americans in the political arena ended up sealing the fate of Black Americans as a permanent underclass in the U.S. While watching this biofilm we were forced to ponder to what led to this kind of seemingly faulty logic and the propensity of Black Men exhibiting fear when it came to facing the abuse of American White Men.
Emmett Till's mother Mamie Till
In terms of fear, the obvious can be easily observed. If American Black Men attempted to fight back during the time they could be any one or a combination of the following: Social harassment, being assaulted in public, “lynched” (hung), castrated, mutilated, tortured, their families may have been killed, wives and other females of their families raped, their houses and business burned down to the ground and pretty much any other kind of form of abuse American White Men could imagine and inflict on Black People in the U.S. but what can’t be easily observed is the root cause of fear for the American Black Man. we’re saying this because their Haitian counterparts were able to fully resist and revolt their slave captors and masters in 1804 and become the 1st Black independent country in the western hemisphere. Why is that? What was it about the Haitians that made the Haitians’ have the courage to revolt and kill their oppressors as opposed to American Black Men?
Caroline Bryant false accuser of Emmett Till
This is a fundamental question that we don’t have an answer for – thus leading us to ponder: did American Black Men fail Emmett Till and their entire ethnicity? Or were there other unseen factors at work? The second question that we have is: did American Black Men hide cowardly behind the veil of being non-violent to effect change after the death of Emmett Till? What prompted these questions were the fact that when you look at every world power and every industry leader – they did what they had to do even when they didn’t want to do it to either establish themselves as a dominant force or to secure themselves as a leader in their industry. Some examples would be the Europeans, Spaniards, Arabs, and Portuguese that left their home countries and established themselves elsewhere by force – even killing the indigenous population in order for them to become the dominant cultures and nations that they are today.
Scene from MGM's "Till"
There are two questions that remain: “why didn’t/couldn’t the American Black Man do the same?” and “was the American Black Man too much of a coward to do what needed to be done to secure a dominant place for the future of his ethnicity in the United States?”. Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. If you haven't had the opportunity to see the film "Till", make sure you do here on Amazon.
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