Civil Rights Author Talks About 55th Anniversary of Emmett Till's Murder; Spark That Set Off Modern Civil Rights Movement

Susan Klopfer, author
Who Killed Emmett Till
Aug. 27, 2010

This Saturday is the 55th anniversary of the murder of 14 year-old Emmett Till, an incident that galvanized the modern civil rights movement.

Do you know the story of Emmett Till? I am always surprised at how many people don’t know this story or recognize its historical significance. Recently, I met an anthropologist from a well-known Midwestern university who had never heard of Till. After telling her the story, she was deeply concerned that neither she or her students knew about Till. The story is still quite new and is just now becoming part of contemporary history taught in schools. But it is an important story and your children should hear it. Is your school teaching this history? Call and ask. You will be surprised.

In observance, the Emmett Till Foundation today kicks off a weekend of observances commemorating the 55th anniversary of his murder with its "A Time of Reflection and Remembrance" gala. On Saturday, the foundation will launch the "Never Again" campaign against social injustice, which continues the positive activist message of Till's late mother, Mamie Till Mobley.

The campaign includes the pledge:

I pledge to never again allow the ugly parts of our past history to become the present.
I will forever stand up against racism, hatred, injustice and crimes against our youth.
I will always stand up for peace, justice and equality for all.

The campaign's launch is on the actual anniversary of Till's lynching, which shares the same historic date of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and Barack Obama's acceptance of the Democratic nomination for president.

For decades, Emmett Till's story has been defined by justice denied and justice delayed. But there is now an effort to mark a new and more hopeful chapter in the story of the Chicago teen whose savage killing galvanized the civil rights movement.

"We want to make sure people understand what hate looks like, and Emmett's story includes all of that. But where do we go from there? We want to flip the script on injustice and move forward," said Deborah Watts, co-founder and president of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation.

Read more from the Chicago Tribune at http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/ct-x-c-emmett-till-foundation-campaig20100827,0,1316443.story

Meanwhile, a second group, the Emmett Till Memorial Commission has requested permission to place one marker in front of the location of the former grocery store called Bryant’s where Till allegedly whistled at a white woman, and another marker at the East Money Church of God.

Read more at http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=15361

And an unnamed businessman from Texas is seeking to restore the grocery story in Money, Mississippi when young Till whistled at a white woman, a gesture that sparked the modern civil rights movement.

Today, Jerry Mitchel from Jackson, Mississippi wrote about the plan: http://blogs.clarionledger.com/jmitchell/2010/08/27/restoring-history-before-its-too-late/

I have spoken with the person, as well, and he seems quite serious about his plan..

If you don't know this important civil rights story (and the history of the modern civil rights movement), please pick up a book and start reading. Or, check out my ebook, Who Killed Emmett Till? You can download half of this book for free!!

Go to Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/b/8175 for a free sample.

Meanwhile, some say that Till's death kicked off the civil rights movement, but this is not so. The civil rights movement began the day that people were enslaved and brought to this country. There are many historical accounts of black men and women resisting enslavement starting back then. After the Civil War, following the First World War and leading into the Second World War, there are stories of significant attempts by individuals and groups to overcome enslavement and mistreatment. Till's 1955 murder caught the attention of Rosa Parks who then refused to sit at the back of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. It was Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who then took the reigns of the modern civil rights movement.

Susan Klopfer

Who Killed Emmett Till e-Book

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by Susan Klopfer, a new e-book about this important civil rights event that took place in the Mississippi Delta



I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2003 as the Emmett Till cold case was opened. Living on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary, a notorious compound with a fascinating history, gave me a unique opportunity to take a fresh look at this civil rights ground-breaking event and to meet some of the people who still had the story fresh in their hearts and minds.

Emmett Till Audio Book Release Set For January

14-year-old Emmett Till, Lynched in the Mississippi Delta, Aug. 28, 1955

News Release
Wednesday, December 09, 2009

Contact: Susan Klopfer
505-728-7924 (cell)
sklopfer@gmail.com
www.susanklopfer.com



“I interviewed the mortuary assistant who worked all night back in 1955 to prepare Emmett Till’s body as best he could for Emmett’s mother, before he put it on the train to be shipped back to Chicago. While meeting several such eyewitnesses to history and discovering new information about this cold case and others, I knew it was time to write this book.” −Who Killed Emmett Till, Susan Klopfer


Emmett Till Audio Book Set For January Release


Release of the first audio book of the Emmett Till story − Who Killed Emmett Till? − is set for January 15, in time for February’s Black History month.

The story of Till, a 14-year-old Chicago boy killed in the Mississippi Delta in the summer of 1955, has resurfaced as the FBI continues to focus on this and other cold cases from the modern civil rights movement.

“Emmett Till’s lynching sparked the modern civil rights movement. There are many people who still do not know this important story and this audio book will help fill the gap,” Susan Klopfer, the book’s author, said.

While visiting the home of his uncle, in the small cotton town of Money, Emmett Till, his cousin, and several other black youth went into the town’s general store. What actually happened is still disputed, Klopfer says, but according to several versions, Till was dared by one of the other boys to flirt with white store owner’s wife, 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant.

“Some accounts state he whistled at her while others say he grabbed her hand and said ‘Bye, baby,’ as he left.”

At about 12:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 28, Till was kidnapped from his uncle’s home and taken to a weathered shed on a plantation in neighboring Sunflower County, where he was beaten and shot. A 70-pound cotton gin fan was tied to his neck with barbed wire to weigh down the body, which was dropped into the river near Glendora, another small cotton town north of Money.

Till’s corpse, surfacing three days later, was returned to Chicago where his mother decided it should be publicly displayed to show the world the brutality of the killing.

An estimated 100,000 people viewed the open casket, bringing worldwide attention to racism in the United States. Till was buried Sept. 6 in Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois.

Less than three weeks later, on Sept. 23, the men accused of killing Emmett Till − J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant − were found innocent by an all white jury, after 67 minutes of deliberation.

Twelve weeks after the acquittal of the two men, who later confessed to the murder in a national magazine, Rosa Parks decided to sit at the front of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama.

“She was not the first activist to make this move. There had been other attempts. But Parks had been planning her personal protest, and along with the NAACP knew the right time had arrived,” Klopfer said.

There had been two recent murders of black citizens, shortly before Till’s visit to the Delta. Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith were shot to death, their murders instigated by anger over increased voter registration activities and by the United States Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark decision, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka.

Brown I declared racial discrimination in public education unconstitutional and a second decision, Brown II, ordered one year later that desegregation occur "with all deliberate speed."

“The Delta already was an unsafe place for any black person, considering the heightened tension. It was particularly unsafe for anyone violating Jim Crow standards for acceptable behavior in the segregated south. Emmett Till was a young man who had never experienced living in such hostility. He was known to be a prankster and had no idea that his action of harassing a white woman would end his life.”

No mass movement starts all of a sudden. “Before the Civil War began and well into the 1940s and early 50s, many years before the modern civil rights movement made the pages of the white press and then television, there were brave souls trying to right wrongs. Some worked in the North and others tried their best from inside “the belly of the beast” −- Mississippi.”

Who Killed Emmett Till? covers this entire time period and comes from a unique perspective. “My husband and I moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2003 and one year later, the Till cold case was opened. Because Fred was a prison psychologist, we lived on the grounds of Parchman Penitentiary, a notorious place with a fascinating history.

“I quickly learned we were living near the location outside of Drew where Till was killed, and close to Sumner, where the trial took place. I interviewed the mortuary assistant who worked all night back in 1955 to prepare Emmett Till’s body as best he could for Emmett’s mother, before he put it on the train to be shipped back to Chicago. While meeting several such eyewitnesses to history and discovering new information about this cold case and others, I knew it was time to write this book.”

Hedquist Productions, a Libertyville, Iowa group, recorded and produced the 6-CD set. “I’m really delighted at the quality of their work. The audio book was read by Jeffrey Hedquist, a well-known voice talent whose work is associated with projects by St. Martin’s Press, Chicken Soup For the Soul and many other well known organizations,” Klopfer said.

“Hedquist has won over 700 awards, including most of the big awards – from Clio, IBA, ADDY, Hatch, New York International, Sunny, Silver Microphone, Mobius, RAC, London International, ANDY, EFFIE, The One Show, and hundreds of regional awards,” Klopfer said.

Who Killed Emmett Till? − featuring the regional music of delta blues musicians − is set for distribution in major online bookstores and in selected regional, independent bookstores.

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Friends of Justice Moves on Winona Murder Case

(Photo: Legendary Organizer Fannie Lou Hamer by Charmain Reading)



Fannie Lou Hamer, a Mississippi Delta civil rights leader, was frequently the target of social injustice. The town where she was once beaten, Winona, is currently the target of a murder investigation by the Friends of Justice.

Friends of Justice launches narrative-based campaigns around unfolding cases where due process has broken down, and empower affected communities to hold public officials accountable for equal justice.

Recently, FOJ took interest in Winona, Miss., asserting that the state’s theory of a murder in the small town, accusing a company's former worker, Curtis Flowers, of the crime "... doesn’t fit the actual evidence, and the state manufactured phoney evidence by manipulating, badgering and bribing witnesses."

Details of the Curtis Flowers case are shared at the FOJ website in a story titled, "A brief primer in wrongful conviction: the case of Curtis Flowers."