The media has played a pivotal role in reframing the case of Emmett Till, by turning a personal and local tragedy into a national statement of racial injustices that altered the views of the American people.
Over the years as technology and media have advanced to the point where information can be spread worldwide and has become a staple in the public justice system. The media is used to display perspectives and educate the public. In 1955 the largest form of media was the newspapers and radio. It was a way for individuals to reach larger groups and to create public opinions. In many ways, Emmett Till's mother was approached by the media with the intent of using her tragedy to make a positive impact on society, in the form of social change. In other ways, the public denied the news and used it as a way to put blame on the African American community as a consequence of their lack of acceptance for the way the laws were written in favor of the white population.
Mamie was the mother of a 14 year old boy, Emmett Till, more specifically known to her as “Bow”. Emmett went to visit his cousins in Mississippi where he was later lynched and his body was dumped into a river. When the body of Mamie’s son was found, the two men who had murdered Emmett, Milum and Bryant, admitted to the kidnapping of Emmett. After Emmet was taken from the home, his uncle searched for him and later let the police know what was going on. When the men were found, they were taken in. Following the arrest they were charged with murder and later they were found innocent in a state court with a jury and judge made up of all white men.
Mamie had Emmetts body shipped back to Chicago where his funeral took place. After finding out that her son had been murdered, she decided that she would not cover up what was done to Emmett. In fact, she would do the exact opposite. She wanted to show the world. She held an open casket funeral that was featured on the cover page of a newspaper showing a photo of her standing with her son's body which was, intentionally, uncensored. This decision to show the brutality of the murder was the beginning of a movement for the justice of Emmett Till and greater social change.
As newspapers were distributed and read, Mamies popularity grew. With courage, she went to Mississippi for the trial of her son's death with the knowledge that standing in a room of white men would likely not result in her favor. Following the proof of an old ring that identified that the body was her son, Carolyn Bryant, came to the stand. Coming from Chicago, Emmett had a different sense of what was ok and not ok for a person of color to say while interacting with white folk. Emmett made a comment on her appearance then asked her on a date, a dare from his friends as an innocent teenage act. He whistled at her on his way out, which prompted her to run for her pistol. Carolyn Bryant claimed Emmett had physically and verbally assaulted her. With no other proof other than her word, the jury declared the defendants Milum and Bryant, innocent. With that, Mamie returned to Chicago but did not give up faith in her community to fight the injustice that was occurring. “Mamie fearlessly refused to allow the U.S. to turn away from what happened to her only child. She turned pain into change that ensured her son's life mattered” (Angela Joy, 2022).She continued to work with the NAACP, to further her case as much as possible out of the hands of the prejudiced judicial system. To this day, even though Emmett Till is remembered and honored within the civil rights movement, justice to him was never served. “That jury in Mississippi, which a few days ago in the Emmett Till case, freed two white men from what might be considered one of the most brutal and inhuman crimes of the twentieth century, worships Christ” (Dr. Martin Luther King). Years later the two men who were at fault for Emmett's death, came out to a paper and admitted to their crimes, not with a sign of remorse, but as a source of income. They could not be tried twice, therefore their experience was sought out by the papers and even bought. Carolyn Bryant remained innocent and unengaged until her death.
Different newspapers present different views and opinions of current events. Many times writers and recorders will spin a story to get a unique point of view across in specific situations. For Mamie, there were a lot of people looking to cover her case. Some to honor her and her son’s story and others to uphold injustice and racism. Mamie chose to have her son's death be witnessed by the public with the intention that it would impact everyone by seeing the horrific image of her son’s death, asking us all, where is the line? The media is an extremely powerful source of information that can reach many different people. Emmett Till’s death on one hand had started a raving movement for rights for people searching for equality, where people fight to stand with each other rather than behind or ahead. People fight for him, for what was done and what should have been done. The images of the injustices he suffered, riled people up, and made them angry. Not often in the 1950’s would you see a black woman taking a stand against the US government. More rare than that, you would not find a woman brave enough to display the grief of her lost son in front of the world for the greater good of her people.
On the other hand, Emmett is today viewed as a symbol of the consequences of racism, and is someone whose story is taught to students to show that “this is what happened to them then.” He is a symbol of change, a way to explain the spark of a movement. Ethically, however, he should not be a lesson to us, he should not be a warning. In some ways, Emmett Till should be represented by his story alone, because for him, he was not lucky enough to be treated with some of the respects and morals that the civil rights movement would bring in the future. It should be his truth and it should be mourned. We should not be taught to say “Emmett Till’s death started the civil rights movement and made us realize we should fight harder for the people who have no voice in this country”, we should say “this is what our country did to this 14 year old boy, this is what we allowed to happen in front of us. The apology in the form of change is what we have to fight for. It’s too late to say sorry.” Emmett Till died at the hands of a guilty nation.
To this day, the media has proved that it is capable of reaching people of the highest power in our government. We have a voice through the media more than we ever have before despite the fact that many things get lost in the threads of social media because of how much content is displayed. Nowadays, there are billions of videos up on the internet getting posted everyday on places such as Tik Tok and Instagram. What goes viral is not up to us but rather to what the app feeds us. So with that, there are a lot of voices that go unheard. However, things that do get noticed by large groups of people on the internet have a very strong voice. George Floyd, who died at the hands of American police brutality, was someone whose death created an uproar on all media platforms. “Within hours of Floyd’s death, Twitter witnessed a huge spike with the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag being used 47.8 million times from the 26th of May to the 7th of June 2020” (Samuel Hughes, 2023). His case was shared and strongly discussed in the virtual world that became a part of our everyday lives, affecting us all. Who is monitoring our police forces? Who is allowing this discrimination to take place right in front of us? The media became a place where protests were organized and trends were created to push back against the people in charge of this racial discrimination.
The movie “Till” (2022) is a very modern movie. It prompts the question of why is this getting shown to us after the fact? It is not written to just educate us about historical events and characters, but it was made for the eyes of the 21st century. This is because racial discrimination did not stop when new laws were written. They show us these images of the gruesome death of a young black boy to affect us the same way that those images affected the people who read those newspapers in 1955. We are not done. They want us to continue to even the slope of human equality with the rage that
Mamie Till -Mobley felt when she got the first phone call that informed her that her son had been taken.
In conclusion, the media transformed Emmett Till’s story significantly by shifting it into something that raised awareness and changed the social engagement of the public in regard to racial injustice. He was the image of the struggle against systemic racism. Mamie Till-Mobley was the mother of a soldier, who showed extreme resilience throughout the process of finding peace for her son. She exposed the horrific reality of racial violence to the world and was met with a cry from the public for her son and for the future of our nation. Together Emmett Till’s story was brought to light by the ongoing inventions of the media and has sparked the motivation for us all, and generations to come, to confront racial violence and inequity and to advocate for change.
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