Opinion
Lil Wayne, Emmett Till and History
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
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The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
T
he murder of 14-year-old
Emmett Till in 1955 was a
watershed moment, mark-
ing the beginning of the modern
Civil Rights Movement. While
visiting relatives near Money,
Miss., the Chicago native was
murdered for allegedly whistling
at a White woman. The brutal act
was intended to send an unmistak-
able message to Black boys
everywhere: If you even whistle at
a White woman in the Deep South,
you could pay for it with your life.
Like everyone else, I was
appalled to learn that rapper Lil
Wayne had made a vulgar refer-
ence to Till’s death. On a re-mix of
an upcoming CD by Future called
“Karate Chop,” Lil Wayne essen-
tially spewed the line: “Beat that
[female sex organ] up like Emmett
Till.”
When I sat down to write this
column, I planned to excoriate Lit-
tle Wayne about his insult. But
rather than spend another nanosec-
ond on Lil Wayne, we should use
this Black History Month moment
to educate young people who may
not have ever heard of Emmett
Till. While serving as editor of
Emerge magazine, I had the pleas-
ure of interviewing Mrs. Mamie
Till Mobley, Emmett’s mother. For
the 40th anniversary of his death
in 1995, I wrote a story on Emmett
Till.
This is how it began:
Mamie Till Bradley was about to
experience a mother’s worst night-
mare. She had to identify the
corpse of her only child, 14-year-
old Emmett Till, who had been
abducted, beaten, shot in the head
and tossed into the Tallahatchie
T HE C URRY
R EPORT
George E.
Curry
River near Greenwood, Miss., for
allegedly whistling at a White
woman.
As she approached the cold,
metal slab that held the mutilated
body at A. A. Rayner & Sons
funeral home in Chicago, the
grieving mother thought to her-
self: “I got a job to do and it’s not
going to be easy.”
Mamie Till wanted to look
body and stopped on his genitals.
Later, she would be happy that her
inspection included that section of
her son’s body because some peo-
ple later would say, incorrectly,
that Emmett had been castrated.
Now, she would know otherwise.
Mrs. Mamie Till Bradley Mob-
ley — who will be called Mrs. Till
hereafter to make it easier to fol-
low the cast of characters in this
drama — examined Emmett’s
hands and arms, which provided
more confirmation of what she did
not want confirmed. Finally, she
took a deep breath and looked at
her son’s decomposed face. This,
too, she did piece by piece, sepa-
rating his face into imaginary
compartments, starting with his
chin and moving to the top of his
head.
Mamie Till wanted to look directly into
her son’s face, but she couldn’t bring
herself to do it. Not yet
directly into her son’s face, but she
couldn’t bring herself to do it. Not
yet. So she started with the lower
extremities and worked her way
up.
“Those are his feet,” she con-
cluded. The ankles? Yes, those
were her son’s skinny ankles.
Next, she surveyed the knees.
Most people have sharp, pointed
kneecaps. But the mother and son
had flat ones. “Those are the Till
knees,” she told herself.
Her eyes continued up her son’s
“Bo,” as he was known, had
flashed a perfect set of teeth dur-
ing his short life. Now, in death,
only one or two were visible. “Oh,
my God,” his mother thought.
“Where are the rest of them?”
The bridge of his nose, though
all chopped up, was recognizable.
She looked for his right eye — it
was missing. There was only an
empty socket. She looked at the
left one and it was detached, dan-
gling from the socket.
“That’s his hazel eye,” Mrs. Till
said. “Where is the other one?”
She searched for one ear and it,
too, was missing. Peering through
the ear hole, she could see daylight
on the other side. The remaining
ear protruded from her son’s head,
just like hers— another family
trait. “That’s Emmett’s ear,” she
said, softly.
His hair? Yes.
After inspecting the outstretched
body inch by inch, Mrs. Till came
to the sad but inescapable conclu-
sion that the remains of what
remained before her were those of
Emmett Louis Till. Still, she
turned to Gene Mobley, later to
become her third husband, hoping
he might have noticed something
that she had not, anything that
would cast the slightest doubt
about whether this was indeed Bo.
But Mobley had identified young
Till in his mind long before the
child’s mother had finished her
methodical examination. The bar-
ber had recognized the haircut he
had given Emmett two weeks ear-
lier, just before Bo left for
Mississippi.
Mrs. Till had one thought over
and over: What kind of person
could do this to another human
being, especially a 14–year–old
boy?
Her second thought was that this
was a sight so ghastly, so inhu-
mane that people would have to
see it for themselves to believe it.
“Gene, I want you to go home
and get some of Bo’s pictures,”
she said. “We’ll spread the pic-
tures around.”
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Obama’s State of the Union — on Point
I
was among the 33.5 million
people who sat riveted to their
televisions, parsing every sec-
ond of the State of the Union
address. I was stunned to learn,
through a Washington Post article
by Lisa De Moraes, that viewer-
ship was less substantial for this
address than last year’s 38 million,
and even lower than the 48 million
that watched in 2010. Are people
less interested in what our presi-
dent has to say? Or is there
something else going on?
In any case, this was an impor-
tant and significant SOTU
address. Unleashed from the pres-
sure of re-election, and able to set
forth a progressive and aggressive
agenda, President Obama dealt
with some of the key issues that
face our nation. He was able to
utter the word “poverty” without
his tongue freezing up. Unfortu-
nately, he is still unable to utter the
words “Black” or “African Ameri-
can.. Still, President Obama laid
out an agenda that will ultimately
have a positive effect on the
African American community,
especially if some of his efforts are
targeted.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. said, “The curse of poverty has
no justification in our age. It is
socially as cruel and blind as the
practice of cannibalism at the
dawn of civilization, when men
ate each other because they had
not yet learned to take from soil or
to consume the abundant animal
Page 4 The Portland Skanner February 20, 2013
B ENNETT
C OLLEGE
Julianne
Malveaux
life around them. The time has
come for us to civilize ourselves
by the total, direct and immediate
abolition of poverty.”
President Obama was not so
efits, and about the employers who
refuse to employ people full time
so that they can avoid paying ben-
efits. Obamacare will cover many
of these employees, but the fact
that profitable companies would
rather offer a worker 22 hours than
30 to save money is reprehensible.
President Obama discussed
infrastructure improvements in his
2008 campaign. Partisan bicker-
ing has made it difficult for him to
work with states to refurbish, as he
says, 70,000 bridges, as well as
roads and highways. The last time
‘The time has come for us to civilize
ourselves by the total, direct and
immediate abolition of poverty’
--Martin Luther King Jr.
direct, nor so cutting. But he
offered important clarity to an
issue his administration has
ignored heretofore. While focus-
ing on the middle class, he also
noted that people should not work
full time and still earn a wage that
puts them beneath the poverty
line. His advocacy for a minimum
wage of $9 per hour, or about
$18,000 a year for a single worker
who might support a family, was a
significant move forward for the
poor. Missing was a conversation
about poor people and health ben-
our nation paid attention to these
structural issues was in the 1950s
when President Eisenhower, in a
job-creation move, built federal
highways across our nation to
facilitate easy transportation.
Have you driven on an interstate
highway lately? Whether you are
Democrat or Republican, we
should all agree that these high-
ways (some called pot hole
central) need improvement?
Some politicians are so willing to
undermine the Obama administra-
tion that they are also willing to
see our nation become dysfunc-
tional.
The two emotional high points
in this speech included the shout
out to the 102-year-old woman
who waited all day to vote, and the
call to gun reform, mentioning
victims by name. I was most
moved by the family of Hadiya
Pendleton, who sat with First Lady
Michelle Obama, who had attend-
ed their daughter’s funeral. They
are not only important as parents
of a gun violence victim, but as
proxies for the more than 500 peo-
ple shot in Chicago in the last year
or so. It was also moving to see
former Congresswoman Gabby
Giffords, unable to clap, who
brought her hands together. The
president’s comments got a stand-
ing O, but as soon as the
president’s speech was over,
thirsty vultures, including Senator
Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) ran to the
media to voice opposition.
The president has offered an
ambitious agenda, and one that
will improve the lot of all Ameri-
cans. While I chafe at his failure
to mention African Americans, I
am excited by proposals to close
the wealth gap. His agenda won’t
be implemented unless we advo-
cate for it. What will you do to
move it forward?
Julianne Malveaux is a Wash-
ington, D.C.-based economist and
writer.