Murder is American History

 

  What is LIFE like for Black people post slavery in America?

    It is a life in America, a country in which they are native born members, still having to check a box proclaiming they are AFRICAN AMERICAN. 

    It is a life in America, a country their ancestors made into a rich super power in the world by their FREE labor, where history erases their PROFOUND contributions of toil, torture, and death.

    It is a life in America, a country in which they have had to continually fight for the right to have rights, where no one gets the continual injustices perpetrated against a SKIN COLOR.

    It is a life in America, a country comprised of immigrants, where lynching remained an unpunishable crime until 2022. MURDER IS A PART OF AMERICA'S PAST HISTORY AND IT'S PRESENT HISTORY.

    If you Google Emmet Till, Wikipedia will be the first thing to pop up and the first paragraph will say:

"Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African American boy who was abducted, tortured, and LYNCHED in Mississippi in 1955 at the age of 14, after being accused of offending a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, in her family's grocery store. The brutality of his murder and the acquittal of his killers drew attention to the long history of violent persecution of African Americans in the United States. Till posthumously became an icon of the Civil Rights Movement."

    

    The story of Till has been told for years and recently captured in the film (2022) directed by Chinonye, Chukwu and written by Michael Reilly, Keith Beauchamp, and Chukwu, and produced by Beauchamp, Reilly, and Whoopi Goldberg. It has grossed $11 million against a production budget of $20 million. It was not a blockbuster movie, but that was not the intent. 

    If you went to the movie and sat until the end, you would have seen the death of Emmet Till inspired the Antilynching Bill. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act is a landmark United States federal law which makes lynching a federal hate crime. The Act was not law until 2022! 

    Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South. Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

    A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy.

    The highest number of lynchings during that time period occurred in Mississippi, with 581 recorded. Georgia was second with 531, and Texas was third with 493.Black people were the primary victims of lynching: 3,446, or about 72 percent of the people lynched, were Black. But they weren't the only victims of lynching. Some white people were lynched for helping Black people or for being anti-lynching. 

    1619 is the year used as the date slavery began in America. 1619 is the date it was approved and sanctioned to torture, terrorize, and MURDER Black people in America. The history of MURDER is what govenors like Ron DeSantis are trying to erase from American History. He fails to realize these horrors have been woven in the DNA of the victims and will not go gently into the night. 

    The lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, on March 21, 1981, was one of the last reported lynchings in the United States. Several Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members beat and killed Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African-American, and hung his body from a tree. It has only been 42 years since the LAST LYNCHING in America!!

     In 2021, there were 18 Ku Klux Klan groups in the United States. The term 'hate groups' includes groups which have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. Their activities can include criminal acts, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting, or publishing (Published by Statista Research Department, Jun 2, 2023). In 2021, there were 733 active hate groups in the United States, down from 1,020 in 2018. The term 'hate groups' includes groups which have beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people. Their activities can include criminal acts, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting, or publishing. 

    The Emmett Till Antilynching Act amends the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act and prior hate crime laws to define lynching as any conspired bias-motivated offense which results in death or serious bodily injury. It was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on February 28, 2022, and U.S. Senate on March 7, 2022, and signed into law on March 29, 2022, by President Joe Biden.

    Today, the subject and memory of Emmet Till will be recounted by the news media on a continual loop. The younger generation will largely ignore this pivotal piece of history. Many of the older generation will grumble people should leave old stuff alone and quit talking about it. There will be the group of people happily proclaiming how much America (people) have changed and we no longer live in a time where racism and it's cruelty were almost entertainment and a group activity. And there will be people enraged for too many reasons for me to account or understand. Many Americans will have even  MORE hatred for the Democratic president, Joe Biden, for his attention to the Black Community.

Today President Biden will designate a national monument at three sites in honor of Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley — both of whom served as catalysts for the civil rights movement. Biden is expected to sign a proclamation on Tuesday, July 25, which will be the 82nd anniversary of Till's birth.

The new monument will be established across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi in an effort to protect places that tell Till's story, as well as reflect the activism of his mother, who was instrumental in keeping the story of Till's murder alive.

    For people on both sides of this history of MURDER, there are strong feelings. Some want to FORGET and some who want to REMEMBER. Today is another day where the heart, mind, and spirit of the people who make up America will bee seen. Today will show what life in America is like for a Black person post slavery in America.