A revolting crime against humanity has been committed in Mississippi in the name of “white supremacy.”
The victim was a 14-year-old Negro boy from Chicago who, in some manner or other, incurred the displeasure of a white woman.
Whether he whistled at her as some say, or whether he made remarks she considered “insulting,” as others say, he apparently was being prankish in a boyish way.
In any event, some hours later, two men, possibly three, showed up at a relative’s home where Emmett Louis Till was staying and took him away in a car. That was early on Sunday. On Wednesday, young Emmett’s body was found in a muddy river.
Because he was a Negro who had not, “kept his place,” one side of the boy’s face had been beaten to a pulp, he had been shot in the head, and a 150-pound iron weight was fastened to his neck by a length of barbed wire.
A Communist or Nazi torture chamber could not produce a worse tale of man’s inhumanity to man. Yet, the barbaric act took place in America, which had been so free of lynching in recent years that the Tuskegee Institute had stopped issuing yearly reports on this type of crime.
The husband of the “insulted” woman and his half-brother are being held by Mississippi authorities on charges of having abducted Emmett from the home of his relatives. Charges of murder are expected to be lodged against them.
The senseless killing of Emmett Till is a shameful blot not only on Mississippi but on America. Until justice has been done by punishing his murderers to the full extent of the law, no American with a conscience can have peace of mind.
If, as is often the case, an all-white jury should be lenient toward the lynchers, decent Americans will demand federal anti-lynching legislation.
A man cannot help it if his skin is black, but a man whose black heart leads him to lynching has only himself to blame for his crime. If the states cannot cope with these criminals, the federal government must.
