Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand (17 page)

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Authors: Mike S. Adams

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My own interest in the Till case began back in 1989, when I was attending graduate school just ninety miles away from where Till was murdered. In the summer of 2010, my interest in the case was revived quite unexpectedly when my friend John Stonestreet, the voice of Breakpoint Radio and a colleague at Summit Ministries, hit me with a stunning revelation: his wife Sarah is the granddaughter of Robert Smith, who was the lead prosecutor in the Emmett Till case.
As a result of my friendship with the Stonestreets, I was able to obtain and read numerous documents relating to the trial that were fortunately still in the possession of one of Robert Smith’s surviving children, Sarah’s father Fred. Reading the original local newspaper accounts and personal correspondence of the lead prosecutor provided fresh new insights into the Till murder case.
When I teach about the Till trial, I will be careful to tell students that there is much factual ambiguity regarding the events leading to the death of young Emmett. But there are some things we know for certain. Some of the most horrible facts of the case are simply beyond dispute.
It was late in the summer of 1955, at a time when racism was endemic—and sometimes lethal—in Mississippi. Young Emmett, at just fourteen years of age, had traveled from his home in Chicago to visit relatives living in the Mississippi Delta. After Emmett told his cousins that he had dated white women, there was a dare, and he ended up going into Bryant Grocery Store to ask twenty-one-year-old Carolyn Bryant for a date. This is where the factual ambiguity sets in. One account says that all Till did to offend Bryant was put money in her hand rather than placing it on the counter. This would have been a violation of the taboo against any kind of physical contact between black males and white females. Other accounts say that Till “wolf-whistled,” asked Bryant for a date, and grabbed her around the waist (which would have been simple assault).
Regardless of the actual events in that store, what happened a few days later was an utterly shocking and unjustifiable crime against a minor. Till was abducted from the home of his great-uncle Moses Wright in the wee hours of the morning. His captors were Carolyn Bryant’s husband, Roy, and J. W Milam.
After the abduction, Till was brutally pistol-whipped—beaten so badly that one of his eyes popped out of its socket. Later, he was fatally shot in the head. A large fan was then attached to his body via barbed wire so that his corpse would sink to the bottom of the Tallahatchie River, where it was finally dumped.
Bryant and Milam were acquitted in September of 1955, just a few weeks after Till’s murder. The double jeopardy clause of the Mississippi Constitution, based on the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, barred a retrial.
Given the national media attention the case had garnered, Milam and Bryant figured they could cash in by selling the story. So they described the murder of Emmett Till to a reporter for
Look
magazine in a now-infamous 1956 interview. They thought they had nothing to lose, but they were wrong.
Milam had this to say of Emmett Till’s last words on earth: “I stood there in that shed and listened to that n——r throw poison at me.” Milam also claimed that he asked Till, “You still as good as I am?” to which he replied “Yeah.” Finally, they report Milam’s claim that he asked Till, “You still ‘had’ white women?” to which Till responded “Yeah.”
Zach, I consider it unlikely that any of that dialogue actually took place. The only honest person who was on the scene was murdered. The two murderers were proven liars. After all, they had entered verdicts of not guilty and later confessed to being guilty. So their accounts cannot simply be presumed to be accurate.
Milam also had a strong motive to lie. Bryant and Milam knew they had been given a pass in the court of law. They thought they would be given a pass in the court of public opinion, too—especially if they appealed to white people’s hatred and fear of “uppity” black people. But the murderers would not, in fact, be given a pass in the court of public opinion. Many whites in the Mississippi Delta were bothered by the brutality of the murder—and by the fact that it was perpetrated against a minor. Emmett Till’s mother, in an act of unmitigated heroism, had demanded an open-casket funeral so the world was able to see young Emmett’s one-eyed head, swollen to over twice its normal size. It looked like a part of a grotesque costume made for a Hollywood horror film. But it was not. It was real. And it evoked justifiable outrage.
I do not believe I am alone in suspecting that the Milam account of Till’s last words was an outright fabrication. Milam wanted it to look as if Emmett had brought the murder on himself by boasting, and that perhaps a little humility could have saved him. Milam was trying to exonerate himself in white Southerners’ opinions by painting himself as an agent of the intimidation that forced black people themselves to accept white supremacy, and, perhaps more importantly, by portraying himself as a valiant defender of the taboo against interracial relationships between black men and white women.
But Milam failed on both counts. In fact, his efforts backfired.
Milam and Bryant were unable to get loans to do business in the Mississippi Delta after giving that interview. Both of them had to leave the area in shame. And both Milam and Bryant saw their marriages end in the wake of the trial. Their wives decided to leave them and start lives free of the stigma of being married to murderous white supremacists. The South was beginning to change, although very slowly.
Racist violence declined in popularity in the wake of the Till open-casket funeral, which had forced the whole nation to confront the horror of lynching. The name of one woman who was moved by that open casket should be familiar to you. I am referring to Rosa Parks. After she saw Emmet Till’s horribly disfigured face, she was inspired to refuse to give up her seat to a white person on a public bus in Montgomery, Alabama. In death, Emmett had helped launch the Civil Rights Movement.
In many respects, things have gotten better since Emmet Till’s death. And they will get better still. (Not that you’d know that from listening to progressives. They always seek to enhance the allure of their future utopia by exaggerating the misery of our present reality. They’re also not big fans of the United States Constitution, which they frequently point out was written and ratified by a bunch of racist slave owners. But the First Amendment played a major role in the success of the Civil Rights Movement. Without a free press, the corpse of Emmet Till would have moved few people.)
The legacy of Emmett Till continues to resonate in the battle against another human rights abuse. The Center for Bioethical Reform has started the Genocide Awareness Project (GAP), using the same logic behind the decision to open Emmett Till’s casket. In fact, they specifically cite Till’s open-casket funeral and its after-effects as a justification for GAP.
The GAP mission involves going to college campuses and putting up pictures of aborted children behind tables where students can get information about abortion. GAP volunteers talk to students about the racist origins of Planned Parenthood and the disproportionate effect abortion has had on the black community. As a result, there is a new civil rights movement forming in America. It focuses on the senseless murder of children much younger and even more helpless than Emmett Till.
LETTER 32
 
Men without Spines
 
Zach
,
What you wrote me about how your life has been changing in the past month is truly phenomenal. It seems that God has been doing momentous things this summer. Congratulations on being ready to start your senior year in college with a new sense of your mission to defend the Truth in a hostile environment. Today I’m going to write you on that subject.
It is difficult for me to imagine many of today’s young men as grandfathers. It is especially difficult when I think of the last time I saw my grandfather alive. It was one afternoon during the summer of ’77 when we were in Birmingham, Alabama. We had all planned to go to the mall to shop for the entire afternoon. But that was before my grandfather fell and hit an iron furnace, badly cutting the back of his left hand. I can still see him standing in the doorway waving goodbye as we left without him. His right hand was clutching the walker he had used for almost as long as I knew him.
My grandfather used that walker because there was a piece of shrapnel lodged somewhere in his lower back. It was there because a hand grenade had gone off near him when he was fighting in France during World War I. He was only nineteen years old when it happened.
He used to tell us war stories—including the time he lied about his age in order to join the U.S. Army fighting against Pancho Villa somewhere down in Texas. That was some time around 1916. He was actually old enough to fight legally in the First World War. He spent his nineteenth birthday in a foxhole in France getting trench foot. It was shortly thereafter that he came out of that same foxhole and got a piece of a hand grenade lodged in his back.
The difference between men in my grandfather’s generation and young men today can be roughly summarized as follows:
Men in my grandfather’s generation were willing to lie to get into a fight, even if it meant they might lose their lives. Men in today’s generation are willing to lie to avoid a fight, even when their lives are not remotely in jeopardy.
I see this contrast every summer when I come out to Colorado to teach at Summit Ministries. The young women are always fired up and ready to advance the truth in our often contentious cultural wars. But many of the young men will latch on to any Bible verse and twist its meaning until they can justify doing absolutely nothing. That assumes, of course, that you consider playing video games to be doing nothing. The only battles in which some of these males engage are fought by pointing a joystick at a television screen. (I know they don’t call them “joysticks” any more but I think you understand my point.)
When young Christian males challenge my sometimes aggressive tactics in the campus cultural wars, they tend to rely on the same handful of Bible verses:
1.
Matthew 5:39.
In this oft-quoted verse, Jesus tells us to turn and offer the other cheek after someone strikes us.
2.
Luke 6:29 and Matthew 5:40.
In these parallel verses, Jesus tells us to give someone our cloak when he asks for it. In fact, Jesus tells us we should also give the person our tunic—literally, the shirt off our back—and if someone sues us for our shirt, we should hand over our coat as well.
3.
Romans 12:18.
In this verse, Paul tells us that we should, whenever possible, live in peace with all people.
These verses are often specifically brought up by young Christian men who object to Christian involvement in litigation. I respond to the first objection by suggesting that turning the other cheek is the appropriate Christian response to personal insults. I concur fully with young men who say we should not respond to personal insults.
But it certainly does not follow that Christians should never take a stand for Jesus. If we never stand up for Jesus, no one is ever likely to slap our faces or insult us in any way. Clearly, those who use this verse to justify total passivity are stretching the verse beyond all recognition.
I respond to the second objection—the shirt-off-our-back objection—by asking this fundamental question: We have a right to give away our own tunic, but does that mean we also have a right to give away somebody else’s?
The question is a fair one in this context because the point of litigation is so often to assert the rights of college Christian groups. For example, a few years ago the Student Government Association at Georgia Tech told a Christian group’s leaders that they could not be funded from student activity fees—which members of the group had paid along with all other students—because they are a religious group and only secular groups could receive funding. Therefore, Christians were paying to support all of the secular groups but not getting any money themselves. The problem was that the United States Supreme Court had ruled (six years earlier!) that this was illegal.
When approached about asserting the constitutional rights of the Christian group, the group’s leader refused to even consider litigation. So, in effect, he gave away the rights of every other person in the group. In fact, it’s worse than that. He gave away the rights of every member of every other Christian group on campus, too. Did Jesus really want him to give away the rights of other people—basic constitutional rights to freedom of speech and religion that were earned by other people fighting wars in service to our country? I certainly don’t think so, and I doubt my grandfather would think so either.
Before you give your answer, consider this: If all secular groups are funded and no Christian groups are funded, then doesn’t that mean that only the secular worldview is advanced with student fees? Doesn’t that mean that souls will be lost because of Christian apathy? Is it really possible to square this with the Great Commission?
I respond to the final objection—from Romans 12:18—by reminding people that Paul told us we should live in peace with others
whenever possible
. But sometimes that just isn’t possible. Prior to every lawsuit I am ever involved in, a letter is sent to the offending party explaining the exact nature of the perceived legal transgression. This is done in private so that the offending party is spared the prospect of humiliation. They have an opportunity to back out before being embarrassed in any way—either in the court of public opinion or in a court of law.

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