Emmett Till

The hate crime that changed America

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For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below.

(339 words)

The woman who claimed that 14-year-old Emmett Till had whistled at her died this week. Emmett’s death in August, 1955, shocked the nation and moved many people to take action on the issue of lynching.

In short, Emmett Till grew up in Chicago. As a child, he had a stutter. To help him, his mother told him:

“‘If you find yourself stuck on a word,’ I said, ‘take in a breath, whistle, and then go ahead and speak.’ He tried it, and it seemed that when he whistled, it was almost a hypnotic cue that would calm him, steady his breathing, and allow him to finish saying what he had started to say” (Till-Mobley, p. 67).

Some of his cousins had invited him to come to Money, Mississippi, for the summer. The social rules for blacks and whites in Chicago were not the same as they were in Mississippi, but Emmett didn’t know that. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, wasn’t sure, but she allowed him to go.

He was with his cousins one day when they went into a store to buy some candy.

The white woman said that Emmett had whistled at her and approached her in a threatening way (which, many years later, she said was not true). Her husband and his brother went to the cousins’ house that night, took Emmett, drove him to a barn, beat and tortured him, and threw his body in the river.

According to Emmett’s mother, there were variations of the story of what happened that day. Emmett had bought bubble gum, and, outside the store, might have been telling his cousins about it, stuttering when trying to say the word. Perhaps he had whistled to calm himself, and the white woman had misunderstood (p. 122).

The two men were arrested, but the white jury said they were innocent. No one was ever held responsible for Emmett’s death.

Bob Dylan wrote a song about this story. Below the video, there is some vocabulary from the song that might help learners of English.

Sources:

Hassan, A. (2021, August 26). Emmett Till's enduring legacy. The New York Times. Retrieved April 28, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/article/who-was-emmett-till.html.

Till-Mobley, M., & Benson, C. (2003). Death of innocence: The story of the hate crime that changed America. Random House.

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VOCABULARY

stutter 吃る

whistle 口笛を吹く

hypnotic cue 催眠術のきっかけ

threaten 脅かす

torture 拷問

rag 引っ張る

gulf 湾

cease やめる

jury 陪審

mockery あざけり

courthouse 裁判所

innocent 無罪

Jim Crow ジム・クロウはアメリカの人種差別法であり、黒人に対する不当な差別と分離を定めだった。

shackles 束縛