CHAPTER ONE

10

TheCrime

Mamie Till was certain they would be late. Although she had been planning this day—August 20, 1955—for

weeks, she and son Emmett could not get out the door, so busy were they with last-minute preparations. Whatever else he forgot in the rush to get ready, Emmett packed his ring. Only the night before, Mamie had presented the ring to Emmett as a parting gift. It once belonged to his father, Louis, she told him, and now it was his. It had the initials L.T. inscribed on it, and Emmett Louis Till wore the piece proudly.

Mother and son arrived at Chicago’s Sixty-third Street train station without a moment to spare. “We could hear the whistle blowing as we got to the steps,” she remembered. “He tore up the steps. I said ‘Wait a minute . . . you didn’t kiss me goodbye, where you going? How do I know I’ll ever see you again?’”2

Emmett chided her for saying such a serious thing at a moment like that, then took off his watch and gave it to her, saying he would not need it. His father’s ring, though, he planned on showing off to his friends down in the Delta. It remained on his finger.

Joined at the station by his cousin Wheeler Parker, age sixteen, and his uncle Mose Wright, Emmett now boarded the train, waved goodbye to his mother, and settled in for the long journey south to Money, Mississippi. The boys were on vacation, and they looked forward to acting like grown-ups for a change—staying up late, talking about girls, and laughing it up into the wee hours.

IntotheHeartofDixieOvernight, as their slow train passed silently through large towns and tiny hamlets, neither boy could fully understand

9781420502138_CSI.indd 10 12/11/09 11:40 AM

TheCrime

the world they were entering, although Wheeler was some-what more knowledgeable. Older and more streetwise, he had traveled south before and had witnessed the racial prejudice of Jim Crow laws up close. This was Emmett’s first trip below the Mason-Dixon Line. As was typical of most American cities, Chicago’s color line was clearly defined and Emmett knew the sting of bigotry. But he had never experienced the kind of acute racial oppression the South promised.

In the years following the American Civil War (1861–1865) and the freeing of the slaves, the South remained a hot-bed of legalized racism. Laws created by and for whites pro-tected property, schools, public office, and nearly every other institution in southern society from what many considered the black menace.

Segregation, or legal separation, insisted that black and whites not mingle; posted signs provided stark reminders of

In a rare photograph Emmett Till is seen at his Chicago home in 1955.

9781420502138_CSI.indd 11 12/11/09 11:40 AM