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Emmett Till’s cousins urge audience not to harbor hatred
By Sean Barron
COLUMBIANA
Harboring hatred only hurts the hater.
That is a main theme Wheeler Parker and his uncle, Simeon Wright, 72, try to leave with audiences they address across the country.
The concept carries perhaps added meaning and importance for the two Chicago men, given the trauma they had endured nearly 60 years ago — and their ability to forgive and heal.
“We had no protection in Mississippi. Even the prosecutor got death threats,” the 76-year-old Parker recalled, referring to the Aug. 28, 1955, kidnapping and killing of their 14-year-old cousin, Emmett Till, in Money, Miss., and the acquittal of the two men who were charged in the crimes.
Till and Parker had taken a train from their native Chicago to visit Wright, the youngest of 12 children, and other relatives in Mississippi. Nevertheless, Till’s family feared for his safety and didn’t want him to make the trip, Parker told an audience of about 300 during a two-hour presentation he and Wright gave Thursday at the Crestview Schools Performing Arts Center, 44100 Crestview Road.
Parker and Wright discussed the events before, during and after Till’s kidnapping, as well as how they were able to move forward.
Wright, who wrote the 2010 book “Simeon’s Story: An Eyewitness Account of the Kidnapping of Emmett Till,” was 12 when he was awakened around 2:30 a.m. after Roy Bryant and his half-brother, J.W. Milam, had entered the home. Milam had a .45-caliber gun in one hand, a flashlight in the other. The men ordered him to go back to sleep and for Till to get dressed and go with them, Wright recalled.
“My bedroom became a chamber of horrors because of the Jim Crow system I lived under,” which condoned such crimes against mainly blacks, Wright noted, adding that his mother offered Bryant and Milam money to leave Till alone.
A few days earlier, Till had wolf-whistled at Bryant’s 21-year-old wife, Carolyn Bryant, as she left the small grocery store she and her husband ran.
“Emmett wanted us to laugh, which is why he whistled. But we couldn’t get in the car fast enough,” Wright explained, adding that Till was unfamiliar with certain customs in the South.
Three days after the kidnapping, a fisherman discovered his mutilated remains in the Tallahatchie River. He had been tortured and was found with a 75-pound cotton gin tied to his neck with barbed wire.
Till’s killing outraged the nation and was a spark that galvanized the modern civil-rights movement.
Wright noted that many erroneous accounts have been put forth about the case, including the claim that Till had asked Carolyn Bryant for a date. In reality, he was in the store less than a minute to buy candy and said nothing inappropriate to her, he noted.
On Sept. 23, 1955, an all-white male jury acquitted Roy Bryant and Milam after a five-day trial in Sumner, Miss. Jurors deliberated 67 minutes, much of which they spent taking a soda break.
About three months later, the men confessed the crime in a Look magazine article and were paid about $4,000 each to tell their stories. Yet for decades afterward, no one had interviewed Wright or Parker, said Wright, who added that he carried a lot of anger before finding God and being able to forgive Bryant and Milam.
“Don’t hate, appreciate,” Parker advised his audience. “When you hate, you’re weak.”
The speakers also urged attendees to stand up for what’s right and to treat others with respect and kindness. They also encouraged the students to study hard and do their best in school.
The audience also was shown a 26-minute clip of a “60 Minutes” episode filmed in 2004 in which Parker and Wright gave their accounts of the crime.
On display was a traveling Emmett Till exhibit that showed the jurors during the trial, a photograph of Wright’s father, Mose Wright, identifying Bryant and Milam in court as the perpetrators, and a variety of newspaper articles on the case.