Culture Friday: Remembering Emmett Till

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s the 28th day of July 2023. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday. Joining us now is Samuel Sey. He’s a blogger, podcaster, and commentator. He’s a graduate of the World Journalism Institute, and one of the newest contributors to WORLD Opinions.

Sam, good morning.

SAMUEL SEY: Good morning, sir. How are you doing?

EICHER: Well, doing great. Sam, this week President Biden established the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument.

Let's listen to some tape from the White House on Tuesday,

JOE BIDEN: We should know about our country. We should know everything. The good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation.That’s what great nations do and we are a great nation.

Emmett Till was just 14 years old when he was brutally murdered in a racially motivated attack in 1955. We know it as a big story, but we wouldn’t know it but for the actions of his mother. She allowed for an open-casket funeral to allow the world to see the brutality of her son’s death.

Now, the guilty parties were able to evade civil justice, but we know now that the tragedy would fuel the Civil Rights movement.

The new Till monument will cover three sites in Chicago and Mississippi connected to Till’s life and death.

So, Sam, talk about the significance of the Till National Monument.

SEY: Yeah, you know, I mentioned Emmett Till to my mom, many years ago, and I forget what she said she was in Ghana, she was born in 59. So three years after Emmett Till, maybe she won't be happy that I mentioned her age. But she was born three years after Emmett Till's death. And I mentioned and she remembered, because in school, this is Ghana, West Africa that he learned about Emmett Till. And it was a massive, massive story. It is significant. So you mentioned how important his death or really his lynching or murder was to the Civil Rights Movement, just a few months afterward, this will explain the significance, a few months afterward, his murder was so important that in Montgomery, Alabama, a woman named of course Rosa Parks mentioned that the reason why she refused to get off of her seat on the bus is because she kept thinking about the face of that little boy, Emmett Till, right, because weeks before that she had attended a rally in Montgomery, that was also one of the people there was also Martin Luther King, Jr. and that later on, when you had all the Civil Rights victories, Martin Luther King Jr. himself said, it was Emmett Till's death, and especially everybody's seeing the horrific photo of his face, you just couldn't recognize it anymore. That when they all remember that, it made them more passionate about ending segregation, and of course, racism, in terms of legalized racism, in a sense anyways in the South.

EICHER: And yet, without a decision to take a gruesome photograph, and then decide to publish it. I mean, credit obviously to the mother for making that difficult decision. But it’s restricted only to those who attended the funeral if not for the courage of journalists to publish the photo and bring it to the attention of the world. What do we learn from that and what’s applicable today?

SEY: Yeah, well, as a pro-life advocate, one of the things that we do, and this is controversial, even in some, some pro-life circles, but we show people what happens to babies when they're killed through abortion. We call that abortion victim photography. And the person who really is the basis for that is Emmett Till, because we recognize how when he was murdered, it wasn't initially in international news. It was when people saw that horrific picture. That's when it became international news, including reaching Ghana, all the way in West Africa, and we in knowing that the pro life movement oftentimes will show people and these are horrific photos to see but we show people aborted babies and through our research 73% of people who see these pictures, seven to 10 people will see these pictures will have more negative feelings towards abortion just because they've seen these pictures. So it's even before the arguments about abortion, that's before all the apologetics just by seeing the photos because of just how horrific they are. They become more pro-life.

BROWN: Samuel, I’d like to get your take on comments I heard last week from Vice President Kamala Harris. Here’s an excerpt of her blasting Florida’s new standards for black history.

KAMALA HARRIS: They decided middle school students will be taught that enslaved people benefited from slavery. They insult us in an attempt to gaslight us and we will not stand for it.

What do you make of the Vice President’s assertion that the single reference to slaves developing skills (which btw, I don’t think is untrue) becomes the focal point of the curriculum?

SEY: Yeah, it is incredibly absurd. The reality is, and we all know this, this, the weird thing about this is that for so long, black Americans have rightly so talked about the incredible resilience and perseverance that is very evident in our community, because of the incredible adversity they have to overcome. So to then claim that that is what the curriculum is, is simply just trying to justify slavery, as they're claiming is ridiculous. They're really just saying that as horrific as slavery was, there is and we see this, of course, you know, as Christians that when there is adversity, and people overcome adversity, there is a new skills developed through that, right, which is, of course, perseverance. So, and of course, the curriculum isn't just about that at all whatsoever. But the reactions towards it have just been just been crazy. To me, it's just been shocking.

BROWN: While we’re on this subject, I want to call your attention to two videos that are making the rounds on some social media platforms. The first one is a hideous rendition of the National Anthem, performed (if you can call it that) by singer/songwriter, Jill Scott.

JILL SCOTT: This not the land of the free, but the home of the slave. (Applause)

And the second video features a young boy reciting his doctored-up rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance.

BOY: I pledge allegiance to your flag of the United States of America. And to your republic for which it stands, one nation, under God , indivisible with liberty and justice for who? For you, for some, not for us. Not for our people. So please stop saying we’re equal with your flag of red, white and blue you beat us. You beat us until we’re black and blue. You beat us until we’re numb. You beat until we can’t even walk straight. (uh huh)

I don’t know what’s more appalling, his words or the attaboy from adults in the audience. How do you counter this kind of propaganda that’s everywhere?

SEY: Well, it's by comparing that to the black leaders from the past. It's really interesting, the more we move away from speaking of, you know, history, with Emmett Till and Joe Biden and Kamala Harris press conference, they talk about how we should learn from history. That's not really what they mean. They mean, they should use so-called history, which is really critical race theory to shame and to scare people. They want to shame Republicans, conservatives, or white people and they want to scare black people. Nevertheless, when it comes to us understanding the difference between people today, and people in the past, or when it comes to a lot of black people, the reality is this: one of my heroes is Frederick Douglass. And I always encouraged people to read what he would say. And he played a massive role in the abolition of slavery, he was one of the abolitionists. And he talks about the blessings of America's founding values. The blessings of the national anthems, the blessings of the founding fathers as well, too. And you also have Martin Luther King Jr, who said the very same thing. In fact, in his incredible I Have a Dream speech, he talks about how the Constitution and America's founding values are precious. In fact, those are the very things that emboldened him to fight for civil rights. But then the more we move away from from these men, the more people misunderstand America's core values. And it's just what I'm trying to say there is that the more we progress as a nation, in terms of an issue of racism, the more so many people through critical race, do you want to divide us? Right? These kind of rhetoric did not come from Martin Luther King Jr. He would never say things like that. He believes in of course, unifying America the same way that his hero Frederick Douglass had those same views. But now decades after people have a more pessimistic view of America than they did, even though there's less racism today than before. So it really is because of critical race theory, which of course, again is to shame, scare, and divide Americans.

EICHER: Well, Sam, I’m glad to have you here as an American. And I’ll point out you took the long way here, from Ghana as a youngster (well, you’re still a youngster as far as I’m concerned). But from Ghana to Montreal, Quebec, Canada, then southern Ontario, the GTA, Toronto, and now Ohio. But you and I have hockey as a common interest. I would point out, despite the massive heat … we’re almost in August, which means only one thing, that we’re oh-so-close to NHL hockey camps re-opening. Hockey’s practically here, and it’s good to think about ice here in this brutal summer heat.

SEY: Oh, absolutely. My Montreal Canadiens were awful last year. So I want the new season so I can wash away the stain of last year. So yeah, I'm very excited but also really, really eager for us to be a lot better.

BROWN: I feel outnumbered here!

EICHER: WORLD Opinions commentator Samuel Sey. You can read him at wng.org/opinions, and his blog is slowtowrite.com.

Sam, thanks for your writing and for being with us today!

SEY: Thank you.

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