Emmett Till's 1955 Kidnapping Trial

On August 28th, 1955, Emmet Louis Till, a 14-year old African American boy from Chicago, was brutally murdered by two white men in Money, Mississippi. 59 years and 87 days later, on November 22nd, 2014, in Cleveland, OH, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was the victim of two white police officers’ fatal brutality. Neither boy chose to lose his life to become a martyr, but both became important symbols of the black civil rights movements in the mid-century and today. Though there have been marginal gains in African Americans’ modern influence on the judicial system and ability to speak out against injustice, the comparison of both murders exposes the ways that white Americans have failed to address the institutionalized racism and inequality that leads
The white community tried to silence witnesses with intimidation, discredit Emmett with stories about Emmett’s father, and accused Mamie and the NAACP of digging up a body and pretending it was her son’s. At the end of the trial, the jury of all white males spent an hour drinking pop and telling jokes to give the appearance of a deliberation, and then acquitted the two men based on “failure to prove identity” despite obvious evidence that the body was Emmett’s. Rice’s trial had a similar tone. Despite video evidence that the two officers had shot him without cause, the trial dragged on with “outrageous delays” and clear “mistreatment of the family’s experts”. Attorneys questioned the Rice family’s reputation by bringing up Samaria’s past drug charge and accusing her of trying to profit from the trial. After 400 days, a grand jury, manipulated by a corrupt prosecutor, did not indict Loehmann and Garmback. Only this month (January 2017), after years of Black Lives Matter protests and the Rice family’s continuing advocacy, did the Cleveland police department complete an internal investigation against the two men. Loehmann and Garmback were found guilty of negligence, but their charges were not connected to Rice’s murder at all. Both Mamie and Samaria tried and failed to have their cases reopened by the federal government. Rice, like Till, still waits for and deserves
Both were instrumental in starting movements against that racism, however. After Emmett’s death, as Mamie described, “men stood up who had never stood up before”. Later in 1955, while thinking about Emmett Till, Rosa Parks decided not to give up her seat on that bus in Montgomery. Emmett became a touchstone in the black community, a symbol that gave people the courage to stand up and fight for their basic rights in the 1950’s and 1960’s. In 2014, Tamir Rice’s death became one of the catalysts for the protests and movement that would form Black Lives Matter, a modern stand against the “nobodiness” that systemic racism creates. Tamir showed Americans that the end of Jim Crow didn’t conveniently erase prejudice and the effects of racism. Despite our advances, we’re still repeating the same errors. Justice will only come to those like Emmett and Tamir after white Americans have taken an honest look at the ways modern racism still corrodes the basic freedoms we take for