Is Invoking Emmett Till a Disservice to History?
Headlines announced Trayvon Martin was the new Emmett Till. Till, a Black 14-year-old from Chicago vacationing in Mississippi, was lynched for allegedly whistling at a White woman in 1955. Again, commentators compared the police shooting of Michael Brown to the lynching of Emmett Till. No charges were brought against the officer that shot Blake. Afterward, when Derrick Johnson, the president and CEO of the NAACP, was asked about the Rittenhouse verdict, he said, “This was worse than the Emmett Till trial.
thewestsidegazette.com