The murder of Emmet Till in Gwendolyn Brooks' Lines

GCSE Religious Studies (Philosophy & Ethics)

SEMİHA TOPAL

01080106 –ELL 4

THE MURDER OF EMMET TILL IN GWENDOLYN BROOKS’ LINES

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917- ) has a great place in the black movement, being the speaker of her people through her poems, in their struggle to acquire equal rights with the whites. In addition to her many awards, fellowships and honorary degrees such as, Guggenheim Fellowship, Fellowship of American Academy of Arts and Letters and Eunice Tietjens Prize of the Poetry magazine, Gwendolyn Brooks has been the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize (1950).

Having attended both white and black schools, she has been concerned with the issue of segregation and discrimination in her poems. Her poetry is “marked by some unforgettable characters who are drawn from the underclass of the nation's black neighborhoods.”

An important theme that she uses in two of her poems is the murder of Emmet Till, a fourteen year old boy whose only fault was wolf-whistling at a white woman. This event had such a deep impact on the black movement that it was impossible for Brooks to remain silent at this event, which led her to write “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi/Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon” and “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmet Till”.

The Emmet Till event, which took place in Missisipi in August 1955, largely occupied the front pages of the newspapers at those times. Missisipi was a southern state and the northerners were already condemning the South for discriminating against black people. There was discrimination in the North, as well; and Emmet had experienced this to some extent in his hometown, Chicago. But he was going to see the real and violent face of segregation and discimination on his visit to Missisipi, where his aunt lived. He used to visit his relatives every summer and according to his friends in Missisipi, “he was one of those kids who came from ‘up North’ every summer...because they needed a break from the hustle and bustle of urban life.” Emmet was a lively and cheerful boy, as if trying to resist the myth that he was naturally inferior to the whites. A friend of his, who was the close witness of the “wolf-whistling” event, John Milton Wesley, remembers Emmet as talking continuously, seeming more mature for his age, wearing a straw hat, having funny-looking, light-coloured eyes and adds: “all the girls thought he was cute.” Of course, he talks about the black girls, as it was a utopia for them to be liked by white girls, and flirting with them was beyond a utopia. White girlfriends were the “forbidden fruit” for them and like other black boys who came from up North, Emmet was telling them stories about his white girlfriends in Chicago, which was a fantastic idea for the black boys in Missisipi.

“In our minds,” says Wesley, “the thought of referring to a white kid in Missisipi as a girlfriend or boyfriend could mark a black child or his family for retaliation from the Ku Klux Klan, or from anyone who was white and aware of the thought, comment, or rumour… We believed that up North there was no colour line. We believed that blacks only had to stay in their place in the South, in Mississippi.”

One day, they didn’t believe him, when he showed them a picture of a white girl in his wallet and claimed that she was his girlfriend. They wanted him to show that he really was not afraid of white people, as he always put forward this claim when there was no white person around. One of his friends challenged him by saying that “There’s a pretty little young woman in the store. Since you know how to handle white girls, let’s see you go in and get a date with her?”; and the other kids encouraged him also. So he went in the store and asked the woman behind the counter, Carolyn Bryant, to give him two cents’ worth of bubble gum. According to Look magazine, which published the confessions of one of the killers later, Emmet squeezed Carolyn’s hand while she was handing him the bubble gums and offered her a date by saying: “How about a date, baby?” and again, according to the magazine, while she was trying to escape, he jumped in front of her, perhaps caught her at the waist, and said: “You needn’t be afraid o’ me, Baby. I been with white girls before.” At that moment, the white woman began to seek for her husband’s pistol and the black kids pulled Emmet away from the store. While being pulled out of the store, Emmet wolf-whistled at Carolyn, which led the newspapers use this title for the event: “The Wolf-Whistle Murder: A Negro ‘Child’ or ‘Boy’ Whistled at Her and They Killed Him.” However, this act of wolf-whistling was never proven and also his touching to her was described as “non-sexual” and “inadvertent” by the people who saw the event.

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Although Carolyn decided to conceal this incident from her husband, Roy Bryant, who was a former soldier, the rumours spreaded so fast Roy decided to make him know his status and punish him for daring to accost a white woman, and even more, his woman. In the meantime, Emmet began to be worried about the rumours and talked of cutting short his stay and returning to Chicago. But his aunt told that if he kept quiet and out of sight, the incident would be forgotten soon. However, it didn’t come up as she thought. Roy Bryant and his brother-in-law J.W. Milam came to the house of Mose and Elizabeth Wright, where Emmet stayed, and took the boy away with their pickup. In his interview with the journalist and writer William Bradford Huie, at Look magazine, J.W. Milam told that they just wanted to scare him. But Emmet was not afraid of them, that is why he didn’t escape from the pickup when it stopped or slowed down. These words of Emmet can be considered as worth dying for a black boy, who was always taught that blacks were inferior to the whites and no matter what they do, they can never be as good as the white people: “I’m not afraid of you. I’m as good as you are. I’ve ‘had’ white women. My grandmother was a white woman.”

Milam and Bryant went mad upon these words and they whipped him, shot him in his head, barb-wired the gin fan, which they already had made him carry, to his neck and rolled him into Tallahatchie River. “Well, what else could we do?” told Milam in his interview.

“He was hopeless. I’m no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers –in their place—I know how to work ‘em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice.As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him.”

After eight days, Emmett’s savagely beaten and decomposing body was found. His uncle could only identify it by an initialed ring. Although authorities wanted to bury him immediately, his mother requested his body to be sent back to Chicago, so that she could make sure it was really her son. When she saw the unidentifiable corpse of her only son, she delayed his burial for four days and made the world see the violent and barbarous face of racial discrimination. The event was made public by the black weekly magazine, Jet, which published the picture of the corpse and created a wave of criticism both among the blacks and the whites, especially in the North. People in the North accused the South for being malicious and merciless against blacks; whereas, the South replied to these criticisms by acquitting the killers, who were respected people in their neighbourhood, in a court which was consisting of all white people. Although J.W. Milam confessed that they had killed the boy, in the interview with William Bradford Huie, the court found them innocent, both in the offense of murder and kidnapping. This lack of justice made many black activists rise against the racial discrimination against blacks, especially the violence against them.

Being the first winner of the Pulitzer Prize among African Americans, Gwendolyn Brooks used her great talent in poetry to express the feelings of the two major women in this event: the mother of Emmet Till and the white maid, who apparently caused the murder.

Brooks reflected the humour of Emmet’s mother, Mrs Mamy Bradley, during the burial of her son, in her poem called “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmet Till”.

After the murder,

After the burial

Emmet’s mother is a pretty-faced thing;

the tint of pulled taffy.

She sits in a red room,

drinking black coffee.

She kisses her killed boy.

And she is sorry.

Chaos in windy grays

through a red prairie. (1960)

The dominant colours in this poem are red and black; one representing the blood, the barbarity of racism, and the other representing both the skin colour of the victim and the evil in the action which darkens the future of white and black Americans. Besides, this event clouds the past glories of America by creating a chaos, which means this barbarity is sharply contrasting with the fame of America for being the land of democracy and liberty.

This short but effective poem mirrors the feelings of Emmet’s mother, who feels chaos, as she had never imagined that her only son, whom she had sent on vacation, would return to her “in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son – lynched” Until then, she was not aware of the chaotic situation in the South, which was marked with the harsh discrimination against blacks. They were relatively free and ‘equal’ in Chicago, having a nice apartment and a good job, which were dreamlike for the blacks in Missisipi at those times.

“Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, `That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”

In her other poem having a long title as “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi/Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon”, Gwendolyn Brooks adopts the perspective of Carolyn Bryant, the white maid who was “wolf-whistled at” by a black male (!). Carolyn Bryant was 21 at the time of the event, and she was married to Roy Bryant (24), a former soldier, who had got out of the army in 1953. They were operating a store at a dusty crossroads called Money. In Brooks’ poem, we see her preparing breakfast for her two little sons and her husband shortly after the trial, in which her husband was found innocent. Her husband and his brother-in-law had taken vengeance against the black boy, who dared to talk and even touch her. The barbarity of her husband came to her like a ballad, a story of heroism, but actually it was not heroism, as it was spoilt by the blood of a child.

“From the first it had been like a
Ballad. It had the beat inevitable. It had the blood.
A wildness cut up, and tied in little bunches,
Like the four-line stanzas of the ballads she had never quite
understood--the ballads they had set her to, in school.” (lines 1-5)

She was the “milk-white maid” in this ballad, and her husband was the “Fine Prince” who rescued her from the “Dark Villain”, who was only a 14 year-old kid. According to her, being a breathtaking woman, for whom men would fight, was good and it was worth everything.

“The Happiness-Ever-After.
That was worth anything.
It was good to be a "maid mild."
That made the breath go fast.” (lines 9-12)

Indifferent to the sorrows of the other woman of this event, Mrs Mamie Bradley, she is doing her best to prepare a perfect breakfast for her “Fine Prince”; but at the same time, she is disturbed with the age of the “Dark Villain”, as it spoilt the magic of her husband’s heroism. Being rescued from a kid was not satisfactory for her, the black child “should have been older” as “the hacking down of a villain was more fun to think about.”

“The fun was disturbed, then all but nullified
When the Dark Villain was a blackish child
Of Fourteen, with eyes still too young to be dirty,
And a mouth too young to have lost every reminder
Of its infant softness.” (lines 24-28)

Her husband has just been acquitted in the court, and she had her family together again. But there is something wrong with her “Fine Prince” as his mature solidness, which she liked when he ‘rescued’ her, was slowly building a wall between them now. After making her babies sit in their places at the table, she “hurried to the mirror with her comb and lipstick” before calling her husband for breakfast. Because she was the “milk-white maid” of this ballad, and she had to be beautiful enough to be worth it. She thinks as if he is doubtful about whether she was worth it or not.

“…..It was necessary
To be more beautiful than ever.
The beautiful wife.
For sometimes she fancied he looked at her as though
Measuring her. As if he considered, Had she been worth it?
Had she been worth the blood, the cramped cries, the little stirring bravado, The gradual dulling of those Negro eyes,
The sudden, overwhelming little-boyness in that barn?
Whatever she might feel or half-feel, the lipstick necessity was something apart. HE must never conclude
That she had not been worth it.” (lines 49-59)

Roy Bryant comes and sits at the table, he looks at the newspapers, most of which are from the North, which described his action as “bestiality”, “barbarism” and “shocking”. But he doesn’t care about them, he was acquitted by his white fellows in the court. He looks at the picture of Emmet’s mother on the newspaper and thinks that they have given them a lesson, a sample of what will happen to them if they don’t know their status. According to him: “Nothing could stop Missisipi.”

“And, what was so good, Mississippi knew that.
They could send in their petitions, and scar
Their newspapers with bleeding headlines. Their governors
Could appeal to Washington . . .” (lines 75-78)

Carolyn’s myth of heroism collapses suddenly, when the “Fine Prince” hits one of his sons for naughtiness. When she looks at her baby’s face, she imagines a bloody face, the face of Emmet Till perhaps.

“She could think only of blood.
Surely her baby's cheek
Had disappeared, and in its place, surely,
Hung a heaviness, a lengthening red, a red that had no end.
She shook her had. It was not true, of course.
It was not true at all. The
Child's face was as always, the
Color of the paste in her paste-jar.” (lines 88-95)

She is shocked, realizing that her husband was not a “Fine Prince” who rescued her from the “Dark Villain”, and she was not a “milk-white maid” in this ballad. This was not a ballad, in fact. This was barbarity, which emerged from the violence in the nature of her husband, who actually did not care about the beauty and worth of his wife but was just offended by the daring of a black boy to accost a white female. She feels a “fear, tying her as with iron”, instead of the secure feeling of being protected by her “Fine Prince”. Her romanticism ends, as she feels hatred against him when he embraces her and whispers in her ear:

“…, something about love and night and intention.
She heard no hoof-beat of the horse and saw no flash of the shining steel.” (lines 110-112)

At the end of the poem, Carolyn Bryant is awakened from the myth of heroism, which includes “Fine Prince”, “Dark Villain” and the “milk-white maid”; she sees the real face of violence, which terrifies her when she looks at her husband, who is no more the “Fine Prince”. And this is the “last quatrain” of her ballad.

The lynching of Emmet Till has been one of the corner stones in the black movement in America, making people aware of the fact that racial discrimination against blacks was at its peak, and something should be done. Though the killers were acquitted, the case of Emmet Till’s murder has been the place where for the first time, a black person accused a white publicly. Emmet’s uncle decided to talk in the court against Bryant and Milam, when nobody from Emmet’s friends could dare to be a witness in the court. 64 year old Mose Wright identified the defendants as the men who had kidnapped Emmet. Afterward, he said: “it was the first time in my life I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime, let alone something as terrible as killing a boy.”

When the all-white jury decided that Bryant and Milam were not guilty of murdering Emmet Till, saying that “the state failed to prove the identity of the body” With this decision, the South was blamed for approving violence, and Missisipi had become the ultimate symbol of white supremacy. The further verdict, which also found the killers not guilty of kidnapping, fueled the public reaction more. This case showed black people that they should not be afraid of being witnesses testifying against white people in court. Also, the blacks in the North saw that the violence against blacks in the South could effect them as well. So, they decided to rise against all forms of discrimination in the North and the South.

Through the contributions of the black poets such as Gwendolyn Brooks, this event has remained in the minds of black people until the present time. However, Brooks was different among them, as she was the only poet that wrote about Emmet Till event through the mouth of the white woman. She enabled us to understand that, although she seemed the winner in this event, actually, the white woman was herself among the losers as well, as she lost her love and confidence in her husband. In her poem, Brooks gave a great lesson to all the opressed and oppressors, by drawing the picture of the white family in the event: discrimination against the “other” not only harms the oppressed but also causes the oppressor to lose their human values, such as love, compassion, and tolerance.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wesley, John Milton, “The Final Days of Emmet Till: Legacy of a Lynching in Our Little Missisipi Town”,
Huie, William Bradford, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Missisipi” from Look magazine.
Williams, Juan, Eyes on the Prize: America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965 (New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1987)
“Emmet Till”, from
Brooks, Gwendolyn, “A Bronzeville Mother Loiters in Mississippi/Meanwhile, a Mississippi Mother Burns Bacon”
Brooks, Gwendolyn, “The Last Quatrain of the Ballad of Emmet Till”