***The Murder Of Emmett Till- Once Again, "Mississippi Goddam"

DVD REVIEW

February Is Black History Month

The Murder Of Emmett Till, PBS Productions, 2003

This PBS production is a long overdue appreciation of the life the martyred civil rights figure, fourteen year old Chicago resident Emmett Till, down in deeply segregated Mississippi in 1955 at the hands of at least two white men while visiting relatives. Emmett’s crime- “eyeballing”, or whistling, or some such at a white woman while black. Sounds familiar from other later contexts, right (like today blacks being stopped in white neighborhoods, on the roads by white police, etc.)? For that childish indiscretion, however, Emmett paid with his young life. That these men, his later self-proclaimed killers were “white trash”, and considered as such by ‘gentile’ Southern society nevertheless insured that they would not suffer for their crimes. At least not under the Mississippi-style ‘justice’ of the times. They were white. And white was right. Case closed.

This documentary is also is a tribute, a much warranted tribute, to Emmett’s mother, the now deceased Mame Till, whose interview clips go a long way to understanding the nature of the case and her lifelong search for justice for her son- somewhere. As pointed out near the end of the film that never really occurred in her lifetime or the lifetimes of Emmett’s killers. Along the way the film details the why of that statement; the murder is graphically laid out, the ‘justice’ system in Mississippi is laid bare. The reaction of blacks in Chicago at Emmett’s funeral and later at the verdict, as well as those in the South who were just starting to organize for their rights, had a galvanizing effect. As one of the journalist interviewees noted, Emmett’s case highlighted that blacks were under attack, knew they were in a life and death struggle and had better start doing something about it. Moreover, this case provided the first solid evidence to the North, blacks and whites alike, that something was desperately wrong with the justice system in the Jim Crow South.

The beginnings of my personal awareness of the central role of the black liberation struggle in any fight for fundamental change in America did not stem from the Till tragedy but rather a little latter from the attempts to integrate the schools of Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957. This film and many of the interviewees (journalists, an ex-Governor of Mississippi, field hands who witnessed various aspects of Till’s abduction and/or the cover up of the murder, Southern white liberals, etc.) point to the Till case as the tip of the iceberg that exploded soon after in the famous Rosa Parks bus incident in Montgomery, Alabama. No matter where you trace the beginnings of the modern civil right movement from though, in Emmett Till’s case there is only conclusion- Nina Simone said it best in her song- “Mississippi Goddam”.


Here are the lyrics to Nina Simone's poignant and appropriate "Mississippi Goddam"


Mississippi Goddam
(1963) Nina Simone

The name of this tune is Mississippi Goddam
And I mean every word of it

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

Can't you see it
Can't you feel it
It's all in the air
I can't stand the pressure much longer
Somebody say a prayer

Alabama's gotten me so upset
Tennessee made me lose my rest
And everybody knows about Mississippi Goddam

This is a show tune
But the show hasn't been written for it, yet

Hound dogs on my trail
School children sitting in jail
Black cat cross my path
I think every day's gonna be my last