I cry every day.
But I cry as I move. –Mamie Till-Mobley
The Coffin of Emmett Till, which I first spoke by heart at a poetry reading celebrating International Women’s Day in 2015, is a poem of the courage of witness by a mother who lost her son to the atrocities of lynching. Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941-August 28,1955) was fourteen years old when, in the summer of 1955, he visited family members in Mississippi from his hometown of Chicago. It was during this visit that two white men abducted him from his relatives’ home. Emmett’s mutilated body was found in the Tallahatchie River three days later. Had his mother Mamie Till-Mobley complied with authorities, her son would have been hastily buried in Mississippi. Had she complied with authorities, the box that contained his mutilated body, which was transported by train to Chicago at her insistence, would never have been opened. Had she complied with authorities, the open-casket funeral for her son, attended and recorded by tens of thousands of witnesses, would never have taken place. To see this boy’s body was to know the true barbarity, not only of acts of lynching, but of the systemic racism that quietly perpetuated such crimes. This devastating witness galvanized the Civil Rights Movement. Mamie Till-Mobley’s resolve is what we need to remember now more than ever in our struggle for justice and humanity. We must have the courage to witness, to break the silence of oppression.
As a white person living in a country founded on both the ideals of democracy and the economics of slavery, I recognize the necessity of breaking my own silences, and waking up to my own implicit biases, as a fundamental part of being able to be present as a true ally with those who are targeted by oppressive forces.
It is the silence
the barn door slammed shut
on a child in the middle of the night
the way the river water
rushes, covers what it covers
the way the heavy lid
stays shut
stays shut
until she refuses silence
the awful lid
her child shut beneath the moon, the ink-black water
that covers
what they did–it took more
than one beating, it took the fan
of a cotton gin
it took a knot of barbed wire
it took
the fear of big white men
yet still
he floated up and she refuses silence
and she names him
and she refuses
to bury this
boy beneath the lid
he’s traveled far
all the way back
from any hole in Mississippi, far
from orders of that government
and it can’t just be
a leaden box
of stones or bricks
it can’t just be
a trick with no boy there
on that returning train
a box big enough to fill
three graves
she refuses, she unseals
she needs to know
the way the distant river
and its little markets,
little houses,
sheriffs with their guns and beer and pop
the official state itself
Mississippi would cover him
she would know
this is her child
from his well-made
slender
ankle bones
his sturdy legs
none of Emmett’s body scarred
all the way up
up to his chin
she needs to
face him
face him
open it
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