Star Tribune
Emmett Till’s Minnesota cousin talks about ‘what we can do going forward’ to honor his legacy
Emmett Till was a child raised in love and killed by a hate he barely understood.
It’s been almost 68 years since the vacationing 14-year-old was bludgeoned, shot, wrapped in barbed wire, and dumped in the Tallahatchie to vanish into the Mississippi Delta like so many Black bodies before him.
All because he whistled at a white woman, who told her husband, who told his step-brother, who grabbed a gun. In an America of Jim Crow segregation and vicious, violent white supremacy, a wolf whistle from a 14-year-old could be a death sentence.
There are those who say – or scream at school board meetings, or legislate in statehouses – that there’s little point in teaching a chapter of history so sad, that makes white people look so bad, that was all so long ago and far away.
History is closer than we think. On April 15, Deborah Watts will talk with her neighbors in Plymouth, Minn., about her cousin, Emmett Till.
“We need to know the truth of what happened,” said Watts, who was a toddler when her cousin was lynched. “You need to explore and get underneath the narrative [and] find your place in the story.”
An all-white jury let his killers go free. A few months later, they confessed to the murder in a magazine interview. His family has spent seven decades ensuring that those men didn’t get the last word.
There will be a free screening of “Till,” the 2022 film about her cousin’s short life and long legacy at 1 p.m. at Mount Olivet Lutheran Church of Plymouth. After the movie, Watts will be on hand to answer questions.
When Till was murdered in 1955, there was hope that the shocking crime would push the federal government to pass anti-lynching legislation. When the United States finally made lynching a federal crime, it was 2022, and Emmett Till’s name was on the bill.
His name is also on a bill making its way through the Minnesota Legislature right now. The Emmett Louis Till Victims Recovery Program would fund $500,000 worth of health and wellness grants that benefit victims of historical trauma, their families, and their heirs. Emmett Till’s legacy is with us still.
Sharing that legacy is a labor of love for Watts and her family, through the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation they founded together. The family brought “our pain and our grief and our disappointment” to the work, Watts said. “And our hope.”
There had been more than 600 lynchings in Mississippi by the time two white men came with a gun and a flashlight to drag Emmett Till out of his bed in his great-uncle’s home.
But it’s Emmett’s name we remember, his movie we watch, his legacy written across laws and stories and scholarships.
We remember because his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley wouldn’t let us forget.
She forced herself to look at what they’d done to the body of her only child and refused to let the nation look away. She insisted on an open-casket funeral and allowed journalists to share images around the globe. She risked her life to testify at his murder trial, and devoted the rest of her days to ensuring his death would not be the end of his legacy.
The Till family, who could only watch as the legal system let his killers walk free, have thrown have thrown their arms around other families grieving children lost to police violence.
“We just don’t stop at the tragedy,” Watts said. “Behind the scenes, we are holding each other up and trying to ensure the legacy of our loved ones. To ensure their deaths are not in vain.”
They’ve never given hope that someone will answer for Emmett’s death. Watts and her daughter once dug through a courthouse basement to find the arrest warrant that had never been served to the white shopkeeper, Carolyn Bryant, for her role in the lynching.
“Are we a typical family out of Plymouth, Minn.? No,” Watts said with a laugh. “Are we standing on the steps of the capitol in Mississippi demanding justice? Yes.”
If you don’t face what happened to Emmett Till, you’ll miss the resilience and courage of his mother and all the others who fought and bled for Civil Rights. You won’t see everything America gained after we lost him. You won’t see all the work still left to do.
“We’re sitting here saying ‘This is the history and here’s where we are today,'” Watts said. “Let’s talk about what we can do going forward.”
A 65-year-old pedestrian was struck and killed by a pickup truck near Christmas Lake Friday afternoon as she was walking through a crosswalk, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
The woman was crossing Highway 7 around 1 p.m. when she was hit by a 2019 Ford F-150 turning left from Christmas Lake Road onto the highway headed east, the State Patrol said in its report. The intersection is just east of Excelsior, between Saint Albans Bay and Christmas Lake west of Minneapolis.
The Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, Minnetonka police, and other agencies responded to the fatal collision. The State Patrol has not released the identity of the pedestrian.
The driver has not been arrested. Agencies are still investigating the collision, State Patrol Lt. Michael Lee said. Alcohol was not involved in the crash, the State Patrol said.
Former trooper Shane Roper, 32, had his last day Tuesday, State Patrol Lt. Michael Lee said. Roper’s attorney did not immediately return a request for comment Friday evening.
In July, Roper was charged with criminal vehicular homicide and manslaughter. He was also charged with criminal vehicle operation related to five other people who were seriously injured in the incident.
The criminal complaint states that Roper had been pursuing someone “suspected of committing a petty traffic offense” as he exited Hwy. 52 onto 12th Street SW. As he neared the intersection with Apache Drive, he reportedly turned his lights off and continued to accelerate with a fully engaged throttle.
Roper was traveling at 83 mph with his lights and siren off as he approached the intersection, a Rochester police investigation found. The trooper’s squad car slammed into the passenger side of a car occupied by Olivia Flores, which was heading west and turning into the mall.
Flores died from the blunt force injuries. She was an Owatonna High School cheerleader and set to graduate June 7. There were two other people in the car with Flores.
Olmsted County Attorney Mark Ostrem said in a statement following the charges that Roper violated his duty in “a gross fashion.”
Roper told investigators he was not paying attention to his speed at the time of the crash, and that he believed his lights were still activated when he exited the highway.
Steven Frane Bailey, 56, of St. Louis Park was arrested in connection with the incident and charged with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide and nine counts of criminal vehicular operation. His blood alcohol content measured at 0.325% after officers administered a preliminary breath test at HCMC, according to charges filed in Hennepin County District Court.
In his first court appearance Wednesday, Bailey told a judge his use of alcohol is not a problem. He has an extensive history of drunken driving convictions, starting in 1985 in Wisconsin. Additional convictions followed in Wabasha County in 1993 and Hennepin County in 1998, according to court records. Two more convictions followed in 2014 and 2015.
A Hennepin County judge set his bail at $500,000 with several conditions, including that Bailey take a substance use disorder assessment, that he abstain from drinking alcohol, avoid Park Tavern and stay away from the victims and his family.
His next court appearance is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 1.
Staff writers Paul Walsh and Jeff Day contributed to this report.
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