The Ghosts of Emmett Tills

While driving home this morning, I listened to the speech given by President Biden at the dedication of the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument. The monument will be in Illinois (Emmett's home of Chicago) and in Mississippi where white racists beat him to death August 31, 1955. Even though the guilty were known (and actually admitted the murder in a Look Magazine article after being found innocent by a Mississippi jury), the guilty escaped justice.

Ninety miles east of Austin is Columbus, Texas. If you drive from Houston to Austin on I-10, you will pass through the edge of Columbus just before turning on State Highway 71 toward Austin. However, the original State Highway 71, now known as CR 329, can be accessed just to the east of Columbus coming from Houston. Take that exit, and drive to the triangle where CR 329 intersects FM 109. Within that triangle you will see this majestic oak.

This is the age of tree that I would call a Witness Tree. But, in this case, this is a Hanging Tree, better called a Lynching Tree.?

On November 12, 1935, a mob of at least 700 white men, women, and children stood around this tree and watched the lynching of two teenaged Black boys—15-year-old Ernest Collins and 16-year-old Benny Mitchell. Afterward, officials called the lynching “justice,” and no one in the mob was punished. The local prosecutor claimed that he could not recognize anyone in the crowd because "they all wore masks."

Consider the crowd that rushed to see this bloodletting. At the time, there were around 2200 residents in Columbus. In other words, almost 40% of the total population of the town came to this tree to celebrate the murder of two young men who were never tried for a murder of a young white girl for which there was a far more likely suspect.

Today, there is no marker at the tree that memorializes the two young men that were murdered or the legacy of a community whose residents celebrated this grotesque act. The only marker at the site is a Texas Historical Commission historical marker from the Texas Centennial celebration one year later (1936) that describes the history of the settlement of Columbus, not the seven lynchings that took place in the county between 1870 and 1950.

There are ghosts of Emmett Tills surrounding us, as well as the ghosts of their murderers. Yes, the ghosts remain but they are silent. Without our voices, these histories will continue to be erased.

There are many of us (such as myself) who were alive when white men in Mississippi murdered Emmett Till. The assassination of Martin Luther King happened during my senior year in high school. Many of us still alive grew up during those Jim Crow years when the Civil Rights movement began to force change in a racist America. As kids we drank from whites-only water fountains; we ate in whites only-restaurants. Our Black brothers and sisters were denied even the most basic rights, and lived in fear of their lives.

Once again America is facing the return of white supremacism and racism, and without us who know first hand of the Jim Crow experience speaking out and acting against this regression, we will be plunged back into those flames whose embers we thought had been stamped out.?

For more information, here is an excellent article on the lynching:

https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/nov/12