We only hear one side in the case of Emmett Till. His murder was horrible, but we get only a glossed over picture of what preceded it. When Newser recently had a short story on the matter, with room for comments, I made a comment. Here it is:
"The young, chunky Till enters the store with a young white woman clerk. Till from Chicago is going to impress his hick relatives on how to do things. Till puts his are round her waist and grabs her arm and makes some lude remarks. She gets away from him, and goes looking for her weapon.
In most civilized societies when a male makes a play for a married woman, he is inviting trouble. If Mamie Till had taught her son some manners, there would have been no trouble. Till got more trouble than he deserved and a brutal death, but had he been polite, he might still be alive."
Normally, the major media is determined to present the case of the woman, usually making the male the villain. This case is the major exception. I was not there. The woman was a store clerk in the small store owned by her husband. She often had black customers without any trouble. Till's friends, who were either insed the store with him, or just outside the door, were looking on. Till was showing them what a big man he was; what he could do and get away with. Indirectly, he was telling his Mississippi relatives and friends, you can do this too when I"m back up North. This would be not a single, but only the first of many assaults on that white woman. She and her husband and brother-in-law decided to nip this in the bud. She rode with them to make sure they apprehended the guilty Till and not his innocent friends. Unfortunately, their brutal, murderous punishment went far beyond the transgression of the teen.---Hugh Murray
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