Ode to Emmett Till: Why the US Needs a Cold Case Bill

By Bill Simpich, Reader Supported News

17 July 18

 

f you remember Bobbie Gentry’s “Ode to Billie Joe,” you remember that her narrator was with Billie Joe McAllister when they “threw something off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”

In the summer of 1967, much of America was obsessed.

Not about the hundred of thousands of Vietnamese being slaughtered by Americans.

Not about the race riots across the country triggered every time a young African American man was shot.

The obsession was about what two young people threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

African Americans in the South knew what Mississippi-born Bobbie Gentry was singing about: The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till during the 1950s.

The Chicago-born teenager was killed after defiantly telling his captors, “I’m as good as you are.” They couldn’t stand it. They threw his dead and mutilated body off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

Till’s murderers were acquitted by an all-white Mississippi jury. They bragged about it in Look Magazine weeks after the acquittal.

Emmett Till was one of thousands of African Americans lynched for challenging white supremacy. These lynchings were often social events, with European Americans celebrating while African Americans were cruelly tortured in public.

This history – and the history of slavery – caused post-traumatic stress that doesn’t just go away.

Emmett Till died immediately after a million North Korean civilians had been killed. They were carpet-bombed based on orders from President Harry Truman. They were driven into caves – and then Americans bombed the caves. Air Force general Curtis LeMay estimated that more than 20% of the North Korean population was killed. “We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea.“

There’s a good reason that the North Koreans are “paranoid.” This history – and the history of bombing civilians in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and other countries – causes post-traumatic stress that doesn’t just go away.

The primary perpetrators of these crimes against civilians were Presidents Truman, Johnson, Nixon, and Bush, father and son. We are talking about deaths of millions of innocent civilians. Not people of European descent.

These bombing campaigns are among the greatest crimes in recorded history.

These crimes are of a piece with the lynchings and slavery. Americans don’t like to talk about these mass killings.

But there is payback. Police continue to shoot innocent people of color. Why is it a surprise when people of color fight back?

People of color around the world are the target of American missile strikes. Again, why is it a surprise when they fight back?

Shooters continue to commit mass mayhem throughout America for no ostensible reason. But there is a reason. These shooters are part of a populace suffering from a mental illness caused by a historical climate of death and destruction.

The only way to treat this kind of disease is with communication and compassion. One person who offers a path forward is the new senator of Alabama, Doug Jones.

Jones was with the legal team that obtained convictions for two of the men who killed the “four little girls” in a church bombing in 1963 decades after the fact. When it was announced last week that the Justice Department is reopening the Emmett Till case, Jones announced that he is sponsoring a “Cold Case Bill” that would open up the civil rights murders of the 50s, 60s and 70s to public inquiry. Congressman Bobby Rush of Chicago is sponsoring the Cold Case Bill in the House. Tennessee’s own Cold Case Bill was signed by Governor Bill Haslam in May.

Jones’s bill requires the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) to establish a collection of cold case records about unsolved criminal civil rights cases that government offices must publicly disclose in the collection without redaction or withholding. It would set up a Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board as an independent agency of impartial private citizens to facilitate the review, transmission to NARA, and public disclosure of government records related to such cases.

The Cold Case Bill is modeled after the act that released the records of the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King. Its review board would obtain the case documents from dozens of sources, get the documents online, and enable citizens to put together these long-lost stories. Some of these cases could even be prosecuted. In other cases, getting all available parts of the story will provide great solace to the families, as well as a measure of justice.

The best way to heal the wounds of the past – and to prevent them from happening again – is for Americans to know their history. We need a Cold Case Bill to face up to these domestic horrors. We need a similar process to deal with what has happened in other parts of the world. We need to look at the hard things – as well as the positive things – and move toward healing.

No matter how you feel about Donald Trump, he is not at the center of this country’s problems. He is simply not important enough. This country has had deep problems for a long time. These problems are decades in the making, and previous leaders and forces are responsible. Trump is the symptom. The cause is deeper.

Bobbie Gentry wrote and sang a powerful ode to Emmett Till. She has said for decades that her song was inspired by his story. Nobody listened to her. They wanted to know the secret. Like Don McLean with “American Pie,” Bobbie was thoughtful enough not to water down the story by telling everything.

Instead, she wrote a song about how difficult it is for us to communicate with one another. A song about the breakdown of a family in the wake of sudden death. Bobbie calls it a song about indifference and unshared grief.

As a society, we still don’t know how to properly grieve – and honor – those who have fallen due to racism and war. The Cold Case Bill offers a way.

In my mind, Bobbie’s performance is one of the most powerful statements I have ever heard.

The story of Emmett Till is its hidden secret.

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Bill Simpich is an Oakland attorney who knows that it doesn't have to be like this. He was part of the legal team chosen by Public Justice as Trial Lawyer of the Year in 2003 for winning a jury verdict of 4.4 million in Judi Bari's lawsuit against the FBI and the Oakland police.