Every August 28, we honor the life and legacy of Emmett Till, who was murdered 68 years ago on this day. The general public could have overlooked his death at the tender age of 14, like countless other racially motivated murders throughout our country before him.
Thanks to the bravery of Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, it did not. The whole nation bore witness to the horrors of anti-Black violence prevalent in the South and across our country during that time in the world because Mamie chose to lay her only child in an open casket. And thanks to the advocacy of leaders like Congressman Bennie Thompson, the late Senator Thad Cochran, Latham & Watkins law firm and so many others, Mamie’s decision and the sites vital to the Civil Rights Movement will be permanently preserved in Mississippi.
Mamie insisted on “letting the world see,” but too many people want to look away from the harsh, brutal aspects of our collective past and present. Sadly, if it were up to some political leaders, the stories of Emmett, Mamie and countless others would remain untold and bastardized.
Mrs. Mamie Bradley (center) reacts as the body of her son, Emmett Till, is lowered into his grave during the funeral, September 1955. Her son, fourteen-year-old Emmett Till, was shot and murdered in Greenwood, Miss. Photo by The Abbott Sengstacke Family Papers/Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images
Across our country, there is a race to the bottom and a political project to whitewash our nation’s history. Under the banner of patriotism and American exceptionalism, fundamental truths about our nation’s often ugly history are now being sanitized or even wholeheartedly ignored. Instead of truth, lawmakers and policymakers chose to, in the eloquent words of Vice President Kamala Harris, “gaslight” their fellow Americans.
Elected leaders’ historical gaslighting in our country takes shape in many forms. Mere weeks ago, Arkansas moved to cancel the AP African American Studies course from classrooms, citing indoctrination. In Oklahoma, State Superintendent Ryan Walters downplayed the role of “skin color” in the Tulsa Race Massacre.
But it doesn’t stop there. In my home state, the
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