Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/01/30/woman-whose-accusation-led-to.html
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You’re wishing hell upon the wrong person. Bearing false witness made it into the Ten Commandments for a reason - it’s an abominable thing to do. Nevertheless, lynching is much worse.
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I know most of us here were not alive then… but in the scheme of things it was NOT THAT FUCKING LONG AGO, and the culture could easily slip back to that. It is doing a good job at trying to right now.
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There’s always some one-upmanship to be made in the comments. All of them can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.
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Not that it excuses her actions but she was apparently coerced into the testimony by an abusive husband. She likely already has a taste of hell.
Glad she finally came forward. It’s too late to get justice but at least we now have truth.
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If conscience is the fear of hell, at least she knows where she’s going.
If that’s the modus that our society relies on for knowing right from wrong, she’s proof it doesn’t work.
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I read about this in the Guardian over the weekend and was so appalled by her actions then and 10 years ago. She seemed to have little true understanding of the consequences of her lies, but just flittered away from them, saying something condescending about feeling sorry for Emmett Till’s mother. That poor boy suffered before he was murdered. Meanwhile, she still lives in anonyminity. What a piece of shit.
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You just know that the red pill poppers are going to latch on to this tragedy to ‘prove’ that women are evil. Double whammy for them to also ‘prove’ they aren’t a bunch of R-words.
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Sadly, we don’t have that. I mean, it was always pretty clear that it was a story invented to justify what her husband and brother-in-law did - it wasn’t remotely credible - but now, although she’s recanting her lie, she claims she doesn’t remember what actually happened. All we’re getting is unneeded confirmation it was a falsehood.
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It had still been within the realm of possibility, if unlikely and unsubstantiated, that Till briefly flirted with a white woman. But even if he had that clearly wouldn’t have “justified” anything.
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Her specific claims at the trial went way beyond that (lewd comments, grabbing her, etc.), though I suspect he didn’t even flirt, in reality. But she only recanted her outrageous claims, so the truth still isn’t out. We still don’t know what likely innocuous thing he said or did that they responded to by brutally torturing and murdering him.
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It has been a while since I read up on the whole thing, but was she not involved in getting it started in the first place?
If he did anything at all; it’s not like the bigots back then needed any actual provocation.
The mere color of the child’s skin was enough, let alone any perceived disrespect.
Maybe his head just wasn’t hung low enough for their tastes, or his maybe spine was ‘too straight’ as he walked by…
“Southern trees got Strange Fruit, bloods on the leaves, blood on the root…”
RIP to the spirit of Emmett Till.
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You’re so right, of course, that flirting isn’t punishable by torture and death.
But as for “within the realm of possibility”…a 14-year-old black boy flirting with a 21-year-old white married woman in the mid-1950s? Even with the caveat that he wasn’t from the South, he would have absolutely known not to do that.
She was the local grocer. He spoke to her, probably with less deference (being from Chicago) than what would have been considered ‘appropriate’ in that area. Maybe someone saw her being nice to him and in that time and place that would have not been received well in the white community. We’ll never know the truth, but we can be quite certain that the child did not do anything we would consider “flirting”.
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“If conscience is the fear of hell, at least she knows where she’s going.”
Besides, if she’s a good little Christian, all she has to do is tell Jesus she is sorry and she gets a free ticket to Heaven.
As a still relevant song from the 1960’s says: “Hate your next door neighbor, but don’t forget to say grace…”
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You bet’cha.
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I am so angry because this story has been basically ignored by the mainstream media. To my knowledge the NY Daily News, is the only large media company to report on this story. White people wonder blacks are so angry it’s because of cases like this. We never received any justice., and decades later, no one basically cares.
The proceeds from this book should go to the Till family, and the lying deceitful bitch should be locked up.
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It probably isn’t getting as much coverage as it deserves (busy week, though not too busy for this story to get some major play) but I did read about this in the New York Times a couple of days ago.
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The NY Times, the NY Daily News and the Guardian. I’m waiting for CNN and network newscasts to report on it, and gives us background to what happened back then (trial, the racism, etc).
But thanks for the info.
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Yeah, cable news is pretty much the worst for stuff like this. Especially if you want full context.
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