jerroncouture:

A small break from the usual, not just because it’s Black History Month, but because gazillions of folks of all colors (I’m white, BTW) need to know about this, and do whatever it takes to never allow events like this happen ever again.

And to think this happened not all that long ago, and in the country that calls itself “the land of the free.”

-56 years ago Emmett Till was brutally murdered for whistling at a white woman… his mother refused to let his murder be be swept under the rug by having and open casket televised funeral…”Look what they did to my boy,” you’ll forever be remembered Emmett RIP

• Emmett Till, a black boy from a Chicago, was visiting his grandfather and grand-uncle Mose Wright in the town of Money, Mississippi, population about 360. Although warned by his mother not to talk to whites, he disregarded that warning, saying “Bye, baby” to Carolyn Bryant, a white woman working at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. Till and his cousin, Curtis Jones, were told to leave town. They did not. One week later, J. W. Milam and his half-brother Roy Bryant arrived at Wright’s house, and abducted the “nigger here from Chicago.” They beat him to death, gouging out one of his eyes, and dumped his weighted body into the Tallahatchee River. An all-white jury found the two not guilty. Emmett’s mother, Mamie, insisted on an open-casket funeral where his beaten, pulpy face was visible to the public, hoping her child did not die in vain.

“Look what they did to my boy.”

Literally crying looking at this - it’s graphic, I know, but I have to reblog this because it NEEDS to serve as a reminder of just how we were treated - even as innocent children - and that it was only 56 years ago. It’s sickening. Absolutely fucking sickening.

(Source: anotherdyingtobedead, via killdeff)