August 28

An African-American Holy Day of Struggle

O n August 28, 2021, Americans will march again for voting rights in Washington D.C.

It will occur 58 years after the famous March on Washington in 1963 on the date. Also, the death of W.E.B. DuBois, the great intellectual, and the ideological architect of the Civil Rights Movement in Ghana, was announced at the March (he died the day before).

But finally, August 28, is the date that Emmitt Till, the fourteen-year-old black boy from Chicago, was brutally lynched in Mississippi by two white racists. That killing, more than any of the other events mentioned, makes all of the other August 28 historical events, including this latest march for voting rights, come together as some sort of continuum of struggle.

When I was younger, I never knew Emmitt Till had been murdered on August 28, 1955. I knew of the horrible story and I knew why it was important but I never made the connection until not long ago.

August 28 was chosen as the date for the March on Washington in 1963 because of Till’s death. Bayard Rustin, and A. Phillip Randolph, the key organizers of the March of 1963 wanted to again remind America of the evil of white supremacy in choosing that date.

The killing of Emmitt Till was the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement. It ignited anger, dissent, and outright revolutionary fervor in various parts of Black America. The thinking was — enough. If white racists of America are willing to kill a fourteen-year-old boy for the sake of their personal white inferiority complex, America had to be confronted on the world stage.

So on December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks did just that. Mrs. Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white person and was arrested. The Montgomery bus boycott began. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. soon entered the struggle and so did a legion of others — whites, Blacks, Latinxs, and many more eventually. The quest for equal justice, which began the moment African people, arrived here in 1619, was reinvigorated again.

The struggle was successful in removing the legalized Jim Crow white supremacist system from the South and it also forced the North to abandon some of its non-legal white supremacist systems. America changed.

People were killed. People marched. People were beaten. They kept marching. Protesting. Writing. Organizing. Speaking out in the name of equality, freedom, self-determination, and racial justice.

Laws were passed of significance. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. The Fair Housing Act of 1968. The struggle did not wipe out white supremacy but it did end the legalized disenfranchisement of Black people.

All because of the savage killing of Emmitt Till, a fourteen-year-old Black boy from Chicago did all of that begin.

The sick, sadistic accounts of the killing of Emmitt Till now remain difficult to read or hear. In fact, when all I knew was that Emmitt Till had been killed by white racists, and his mother, Mamie Till, insisted his casket be open for his Chicago funeral, the killing upset me but not like it does now.

Now, I can barely hold back my anger for the act. The overall details of the killing of Emmitt Till are deeply disturbing and especially so that a jury failed to hold the killers accountable and many white people kept their mouths shut.

Here’s a list of some of the other details related to the Till murder:

• The killers, after being found not guilty by an all white male jury in 68 minutes, sold their story to Look Magazine for $4000 admitting they killed Emmitt Till;
• The killers tortured Emmitt Till for hours before killing him because they found it entertaining;
• One of the murderers rode around with a movie producer who was thinking of making a film about the killing and laughed about the killing on tape as he recalled it; and
• Two Black eyewitnesses who testified at the trial were forced to immediately leave Mississippi.

This is sick stuff. Racism is sick especially when it is the organizing principle for an entire country.

But there are other principles more worthy of our time.

On August 28, 2021, many Americans will gather in Washington D.C. to demand voting rights just as they did in 1963. It will be 58 years after that march. It will also be 66 years after Emmitt Till was murdered.

While Black America has achieved much in the last 66 years, much has also been taken. And right now, Republican controlled legislatures all across the country are seeking to take away Black voting rights. It is shameful and evil.

They keep trying to say the laws are to make the elections free of fraud. No one believes that, not even them. It’s a lie.

Republicans have admitted over and over that they just want to win the elections and don’t care how they win. They rely on voter suppression of Black and Hispanic voters to win elections. They pass laws to try to stop Blacks from voting. They have been clear about their intentions.

On August 28, 2021, show up and begin the next leg of the fight for equal justice in America.

Related Reading

References and Sources

Cultured Editors Voting Rights Brigade Voting Rights Lab The Atlantic The Progressive Pen Esquire LEVEL Editors Ben Jealous NAACP Legal Defense Fund Black Enterprise SCLC Democracy for America The Obama Foundation The Carter Center Public Citizen Fair Fight Action National Book Review WEOC Editors