I knew Mamie Till Mobley, whose 14-year-old son was beaten, shot in the face, tied up with a gin fan and thrown in the Tallahatchie River for whistling at a white woman. And people wonder why the older generation of blacks are still angry?
Before her recent passing a few years ago, Mamie was a woman of grace and stature. She quietly told the story of her son. She wanted people to remember her son as good and kind and vivacious. She worked tirelessly to erase the smears that his all white jury laid upon him at the murder trial.
Once upon a time not so long ago, fiery cries from the pulpit like those of Reverend Wright were meant as a battle cry to inflame passions against lynchings and beatings of relatives, friends and strangers across the south. the words were purposefully meant to shock people into action against injustice.
But Obama is right, now that kind of divisive talk is no longer an appropriate way to address the evilness in society that still exists. It only serves to open old wounds afresh and draw new battle lines.
As Obama said in 2005:
But for those who still harbor anger in their hearts, who still wonder how to move on from such terrible violence, it is worth reflecting for a moment on one remarkable individual: Mamie Till Mobley.
Mamie Till Mobley's child Emmett was only 14 years old when they found him in the Mississippi River [sic], beaten and bloodied beyond recognition. After Ms. Mobley saw her child, her baby, unrecognizable, his face so badly beaten it barely looked human, someone suggested that she should have a closed casket at his funeral. She said: No, we are going to have an open casket, and everybody is going to witness what they did to my child.
The courage displayed by this mother galvanized the civil rights movement in the North and in the South. And, despite the immensity of the pain she felt, Mamie Till Mobley has repeatedly said: I never wasted a day hating. Imagine that. She never wasted a day hating, not one day.
We as a society are ready for open and honest discussion. And although, thankfully, we no longer see the open hostility behind the approximately 4,000 lynchings that took place in our country, racism is still alive and well in America. And to pretend otherwise is a disservice to this country.
Let's talk about stomping out racism, shall we?
Emmett Till