67 years before Michael Brown jr. was murdered in Ferguson, my father was teen hearing about Emmett Till being lynched by white men. In this episode, he talks about how this news and the community events that happened afterward made a life long impression.
Read the story I wrote about his historic memory and listen to our conversation about it below!
Consider the Moon
Eugene Redmond loved to “jone”. Like most of the other boys in East Saint Louis, Illinois, he could take some half-embarrassing fact about another boy’s mother and turn it into a running routine, complete with conversations between her and the roaches in the front room. He was probably doing just that he day he found out.
That day, he and about two dozen other boys were walking back to Lincoln High from track practice. Lincoln was one of two high schools in town. East Side was the other. The Redmonds were known all over the medium sized city. A couple of the older ones had attended East Side before their mother had passed away and they’d been forced to move. Among the 10-child brood, Eugene, or “Gene” as he was called, was known for his ability on the track and his poetry. With his rather slight build (he was just over 5’ 10” and 125 pounds) and his brown complexion, he was not the “matinee idol-type” of the times. It was his dexterity with words that got him over, and even secured him a place in the heart of a very popular big-legged cheerleader at school.
That day, Several cliques or clusters of Black youths were making the daily trek from 15th to 13th street, about a half-mile’s walk. They practiced at the community park because the field next to Lincoln wasn’t big enough. Besides, the park had been sectioned off for the 100-meter and relays, and it was a central spot where generations of Lincoln High students and grads could come and view the “new crop”.
It was on days like this that the boys, who ranged in age from 15 to 20 years, would ponder world events. Space flight and Sputnik had dominated the conversation for months. Sometimes there was “doo-wapping” and singing.
“Gene” would do his best imitation of one of the “Bronze balladeers”—Billy Eckstine, Nat King Cole, or Roy Hamilton. Women were also a regular topic. The stark differences between the centerfolds in Playboy and those in Jet magazine were discussed. An “eight-page bible” would be passed around—a pamphlet of sex cartoons featuring one artist’s bawdy rendering of what a meeting between the Pope and Marilyn Monroe would really consist of. It was 1955, late in the year, unseasonably warm, and Gene wondered what was really on the moon.
He was jolted out of his thoughts by the appearance of a long, black Cadillac. It was filled with upperclassmen. Roosevelt “Dad” Peabody and Charles Bruno, Lincoln High’s football and basketball stars respectively, were among the three-deep pack. “Hey! Did y’all hear about this dude down in Mississippi? They killed him and cut his stuff out for whistling at a White woman!” Instantly, there was disbelief. It was a known fact that the football and basketball players felt superior to the track team. Was this part of some elaborate joke that would end with a jone on someone’s mother?
The news traveled in two directions at once, going up ahead and behind to all the boys. “Emmetill” was Black, 14, and dead. Gene had never been to Mississippi.
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“. . . He thought he was as good as any white man.” This is what Roy Bryant said when asked “Why?” in a 1955 issue of Look Magazine. In that same article, he and his half-brother, J. W. Milam, detailed what they did to Emmett Till. What they did and were acquitted for in 1955.
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Once Gene arrived at Lincoln and entered the showers, the full brunt of the news was playing itself out. It ran the gambit. It was as diverse as the boys themselves were. “Fuck White people!” “Pray for White people.” “All of them need to go to the moon. They so interested in flying up there!” One of the coaches came and talked with the boys, explaining to them that they “had come a long way as a people, but it was obvious that they still had a long way to go.” The murdered boy’s name was clarified. It was Emmett. Emmett “Bobo” Till. A Jet magazine was passed around with all of the details. Gene saw tears in some of their eyes.
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Emmett “Bobo” Till had just graduated from an integrated junior high in Chicago, Illinois when he begged his mother to go visit relatives in Mississippi. She reluctantly let him go, but not before explaining to him that if he ever were to meet a White woman on the street, that he should step out of her way and be sure to keep his head down. Bobo thought that was ridiculous.
He arrived in Money, Mississippi in August, and spent his first few weeks there enjoying the company of his cousins and their grandfather, Mose Wright. In his wallet, Emmett carried a school picture of a White girl, his girlfriend. This fact piqued the interest of his cousins, and they dared him to speak to the White woman in the store where they bought candy. That woman was 21- year old Carolyn Bryant. Some say Emmett whistled, some say he said “Bye Baby.” Whatever happened, it enraged her husband, Roy Bryant.
On Sunday, August 28, 1955, four men came out to 64-year old Mose Wright’s farm and asked to see the boy who “did the talking”. Mose reluctantly got Emmett out of bed. He was told that he “would not see 65” if he did not. Three days later, Emmett’s mutilated and decomposing body was pulled from the Tallahatchie river. He had been beaten, shot, wired to a 75-pound cotton gin fan and thrown in. His face was unrecognizable. The only identifying element was a
silver ring bearing the letters “L. T.” for his father Louis Till, who had died ten years earlier.
Mamie Till-Mobley, demanded her son’s body be sent back home to Illinois. Then she ordered an open casket funeral so that the world could see what had been done to him. Jet magazine published a picture of the horribly disfigured corpse.
Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam were charged with the murder of Emmett Till. Between September 19th and September 23rd of ’55, Bryant and Milam were tried. It took one hour and five minutes for the jury to acquit them on all counts.
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Gene watched the scene around him. The cream-colored concrete tile in the shower seemed desolate and dry. He had walked to school beside Strawberry and Herbert Mullins. Where were they now? Some guys were being rubbed down by trainers. Some were showering. He thought about the moon. He had looked at it beside a girl once. It was different then. What if all the White people did get on it? Then how would it look?
Amos Thomas, the best singer in the school, shouted out. “Who did they kill?!” Someone answered. “Emmett Bobo Till!” Amos was laughing. It was that manic laugh that comes on when you can’t cry and you have to make a sound.
He repeated his question. This time, however, his voice was rhythmic and it had a crooner’s note in it. “Who did they kill?” Six beats. The last two faster than the first four. Gene answered in time with everyone else. “Emmett Bobo Till!” Faces lifted and fell as Amos slapped the locker next to his cheek. Questioning over and over and always receiving the same answer. The rhythm was a bluesy staccato that ebbed until it became a vocalic dirge as Amos called and the walls responded. The hand rhythms that had been adopted by every one rose to prominence. They stood out next to the name Emmett Bobo Till which had now become a refrain. It was his name. At the same time, it was a warning. It was becoming entrenched in their minds — a code that would be added with so many other codes, some learned, some inherited.
Gene’s voice faded with the groups. Emmett had been memorialized. Later that year, Emmett’s mother would visit East Saint Louis along with the NAACP. It would be the first time Gene would see that many cars owned by Blacks in one place for something other than a concert. There, in the back of Hughes-Quinn Junior High, watching Mrs. Till-Mobley, he realized they were different. Something had happened. Something had started. They were gonna be the last generation to “take it”. They had to be.
The audience rose to a long standing ovation. As everyone filed out, “civil rights” was on the lips of most of the crowd. Gene looked up. The night was clear and cold. The moon was waning. In a few days, the new moon would rise.
The Memoir My Dad Wouldn’t Write is a Radically honest conversation between a daughter and her dad. My dad has had an incredible life as a poet, activist, professor, and cultural worker. He wouldn’t write a memoir, so this series of conversations is partly that.