This is the time of year when we often choose to situate our reflective gaze on a particular memory that determines how we see our place in the world as we move into a new year and new possibilities. While I am not someone who typically makes resolutions, I do take an account of what I have learned. And yet I don’t see myself moving through the world in isolation, but intimately connected to a community of people — namely Black people — who have consistently weathered tumultuous times when we strengthened our resolve.
As we approach the end of this year, I choose to reach back to a collective memory in the midst of a noteworthy anniversary that is painful and yet ever-present and eerily prophetic — 60 years in the making — #BlackLivesMatter. As James Baldwin stated in his national bestseller, The Fire Next Time (1963), “Color is not a human or a personal reality, it is a political reality.” So I make note that this year marks the 60th anniversary of the death of 14-year-old Emmett Till, as it was Aug. 31, 1955, when his tortured and decomposed body was discovered as it floated to the surface of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. Two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milan, were subsequently arrested for Till’s murder, and there was plenty of evidence they were responsible. They killed Emmett Till because he had allegedly whistled at Carolyn Bryant, Roy’s wife, and at that time in Mississippi, it was practically suicidal for Black men to even be on the same sidewalk as a white woman. But in spite of the overwhelming evidence of their guilt, it took the all-white male jury just a little over an hour to acquit the two men of this crime.
In an interview, Till’s mother, Mamie Till Mobley, said upon learning of Emmett’s death three days after she reported him missing, she realized, “This was a load I was going to have to carry. I wouldn’t get any help carrying this load.” But in the face of this unbearable trauma, she opened up that casket for the world to witness the violence of her child’s murder, and it was the Black press that followed her lead and mobilized a communal response. Jet magazine ran a picture of Emmett Till’s brutalized body in the casket, and as many scholars have noted, there was a visceral reaction throughout the Black community from north to south. The death of Emmett Till served as a catalyst to the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement to address systemic racial oppression, which included fighting for anti-lynching laws and a more fair and relevant justice system that honored the humanness and worthiness of all victims of violence, regardless of race. Upon reflection, we are still working on this goal.
We suffer, we cautiously wait for justice and validation, perhaps some understanding and empathy. We organize and take inventory, work toward healing, dream of a better tomorrow and act. While there has been a lot of attention rightfully focused on the #BlackLivesMatter movement that resulted from the killing of Michael Brown Jr. in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands police officer Darren Wilson, I would like to acknowledge and honor a more localized, heroic response to the abject and unnecessary violence suffered in the historic Butler-Tarkington neighborhood where four of many unsolved murders have taken place — Clarence Wade Havvard, 32; Marshawn Frazier, 20; Malik Perry, 19, and Deshawn Swanson, 10.
Longtime resident Damon Lee is working with other parents in the community to organize positive activities for the children to “take back their neighborhood block-by-block,” and to continue to put pressure on IMPD to “recognize them as citizens.” Lee is related to Clarence Wade Havvard and has a son who plays for the neighborhood football team, the “Indianapolis Steelers,” of which Deshawn Swanson was a member. He started a youth-focused organization called W.A.D.E. (Working Against Despair Everyday) and emphasizes they are fighting against the systemic disinvestment of their children and working toward instilling hope for a better tomorrow. It is the perseverance of people like Mamie Till Mobley and our own Damon Lee that remind me that we can be resolute and move forward.
Dr. Terri Jett is an associate professor of political science and special assistant to the provost for diversity and inclusivity at Butler University. Comments can be sent to tjett@butler.edu.
