My contribution to Black History Month.

Emmett Louis "Bobo" Till was a Black boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after being disrespectful to 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the married proprietor of a small grocery store. Till was from Chicago, visiting his relatives in the Mississippi Delta region and had been warned to be very careful of the local white people. Several nights later, Bryant's husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam, arrived at Till's great-uncle's house where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, with a weight tied around his neck with barbed wire.

Till was returned to Chicago and his mother, who had raised him mostly by herself, insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket to show the world the brutality of the killing. Tens of thousands attended his funeral and images of his mutilated body were published in black magazines and newspapers, rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. bringing intense scrutiny to bear on the condition of black civil rights in Mississippi. Bryant and Milam were acquitted of Till's kidnapping and murder by an all white male jury, but a year later, protected by double jeopardy, they admitted to the killing . Till's murder is one of the key events that motivated the Civil Rights Movement.



When I was ten my teacher told me that I was probably the worst writer in Yorkshire. Well back in those days Yorkshire represented the known world, so not unnaturally I was very upset. Eventually I went to my Gran who was a beautiful writer for help. She gave me two books to read. They were The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. I guess most of us have read these books, but I was reminded of the later last night when the BBC sent a journalist back to Monroeville Alabama to see how much things had changed since the book was written. The answer was of course was they had and they hadn’t. Among the many people interviewed was a rather silly little man who not only was the most ludicrous bigot, but a Grand Wizard in The Ku Klux Klan. What struck me most about the program however was how eminently re-readable the book is as we begin Black History month. It is not solely a book about bigotry and racism it is about the need for putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes. It is about humanity and tolerance. However most of all it is a truly beautiful book that could only have been written by a woman. It’s sheer beauty played a big part in making many Americans accept some very unpalatable truths about themselves and just like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Junior have shown there’s more than one way to skin a cat.