"I realized that Emmett had achieved the significant impact in death that he had been denied in life. Even so, I had never wanted Emmett to be a martyr. I only wanted him to be a good son. Although I realized all the great things that had been accomplished largely because of the sacrifices made by so many people, I found myself wishing that somehow we could have done it another way."- Mamie Till, mother of Emmett Till
Let us remember Mamie
Till, the mother of 14 year old Emmett Till. Although she passed away on
January 6, 2003, she inspired us by speaking out against evil and fighting for
justice for her son. We remember your son too, and we made him one of The
82 murdered children of Unit 1012, where we will not forget him. We will
post information about her from Wikipedia and other links.
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Till-Mobley during a interview outside the
courthouse after Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam was acquitted for the murder of her son
Emmett Till, September 23, 1955.
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Born
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Mamie
Elizabeth Carthan
November 23, 1921 Webb, Mississippi, U.S. |
Died
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January
6, 2003 (aged 81)
Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
Nationality
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American
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Education
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Argo
Community High School
Chicago Teacher's College Loyola University Chicago |
Known for
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Mother
of Chicago teenager Emmett Till who was murdered in Mississippi in 1955.
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Spouse(s)
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Louis Till (m. 1940–45)
(1 child; Emmett Till)
Pinky Bradley (m. 1951–52) Gene Mobley (m. 1975–99) |
Mamie Elizabeth Till-Mobley (born Mamie Elizabeth
Carthan; November 23, 1921 – January 6, 2003) was the mother of Emmett Till, whose murder mobilized the African-American Civil Rights
Movement. Emmett Till was murdered in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, at
the age of 14, after being accused of acting inappropriately with a white
woman. For her son's funeral in Chicago, Mamie Till insisted that the casket
containing his body be left open, because, in her words,
"I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby."
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Emmett Till in a photograph taken by his
mother on Christmas Day 1954, about eight months before his murder. When the
photo ran in the Jackson Daily News Till and his mother were given
"a profound pathos in the flattering photograph", which
"humanized the Tills".
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Early life
Born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan on
November 23, 1921 in a small town near Webb,
Mississippi, she was the only child of John and Alma Carthan. Wanting to
leave the South, in 1922 her father moved to Argo,
Illinois, near Chicago, shortly after her birth. In Argo, a small
industrial town, he found work at the Argo Corn Products Refining Company. Alma
Carthan joined her husband in January 1924, bringing two-year-old Mamie with
her. They settled in a predominately black and close-knit neighborhood in Argo.
When Mamie was 13, her parents divorced. Devastated, she threw herself into her
school work, and excelled in her studies. Alma had high hopes for her only
child and although Alma Carthan said that in her day "the girls had one
ambition -- to get married", she had encouraged Mamie in her studies. Even
though very few of Mamie's peers even finished high school, Mamie was the
first black student to make the "A" Honor roll, and only the
fourth black student to graduate from the predominately white Argo Community High School.
Aged 18, she met a young man from New Madrid, Missouri named Louis Till.
He worked at the Argo Corn Company, was an amateur boxer, and was popular with
women. Her parents disapproved, thinking the charismatic Till was "too
sophisticated" for their daughter. At her mother's insistence, she broke
off their courtship. But the persistent Till won out, and they married on
October 14, 1940. Both were 18 years old. Their only child, Emmett Louis Till, was born 9 months later. They
separated in 1942 after she found out he had been unfaithful, and later choked
her to unconsciousness, to which she responded by throwing scalding water at
him. Eventually she obtained a restraining
order against him. After violating this repeatedly, a judge forced him to
choose between enlistment in the U.S. Army
or facing jail time. Choosing the former, he joined the Army in 1943.
In 1945 Mamie received notice from the
Department of Defense informing
her, without a full explanation, that her husband had been killed during army service in Italy. Mamie Till
would later say that she was only told that his death was due to "willful
misconduct", and noted that bureaucracy had frustrated her attempts to
learn anything more. In fact, Louis Till had been court-martialed
on charges of the murder of an Italian woman and the rape of two others in Civitavecchia,
in Italy. After a
lengthy investigation he was convicted, and was executed by hanging near Pisa on July 2, 1945.
But the details of Till's execution only fully emerged ten years later, after
the murder of his son Emmett and the subsequent trial for that crime. By the
early 1950s, Mamie and Emmett had moved to Chicago's South Side. Mamie met and married
"Pink" Bradley, but they divorced two years later.
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Emmett Till and Mamie Till
[PHOTO SOURCE: http://www.death2ur.com/emmett_till_gravesite.htm]
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Murder of
Emmett Till
In 1955, when Emmett was fourteen, his
mother put him on the train to spend the summer visiting his cousins in Money, Mississippi. She was never to see him
alive again. Her son was abducted and brutally murdered on August 28, 1955,
after being accused of interacting inappropriately with a white woman. The
following month Roy Bryant and his half-brother
J.W. Milam faced trial for Till's kidnapping and murder, but were
acquitted by the all-white jury, after a five day trial and a 67-minute
deliberation. One juror said, "If we hadn't
stopped to drink pop, it wouldn't have taken that long." Only
months later, in an interview with Look magazine in 1956, protected
against double jeopardy, Bryant and Milam admitted to
killing Emmett Till.
For her son's funeral, Till insisted
that the casket containing his body be left open, because, in her words, "I wanted the world to see what they did to my
baby." Tens of thousands of people viewed Emmett's body and
photographs were circulated around the country. Through the constant attention
it received, the Till case became emblematic of the disparity of justice for
blacks in the South. The NAACP asked Mamie Till to tour the country relating
the events of her son's life, death, and the trial of his murderers. It was one
of the most successful fundraising campaigns the NAACP had ever known.
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Mamie at her son’s casket
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Later
life, education and death
Mamie Till graduated from Chicago
Teacher's College in 1956. She remarried one last time, to Gene Mobley on June
24, 1957. She became a teacher, changed her surname to Till-Mobley, and
continued her life as an activist working to educate people about what happened
to her son. In 1976 she obtained a master's degree in administration at Loyola
University Chicago. In 1992, Mamie Till-Mobley had the opportunity to listen
while Roy Bryant was interviewed about his involvement in her son's murder.
With Bryant unaware that Till-Mobley was listening, he asserted that Emmett
Till had ruined his life. He expressed no remorse and stated "Emmett Till is dead. I don't know why he can't just
stay dead." Two years later, in 1994, Roy Bryant died of cancer,
aged 63. Mamie and Gene Mobley were happily married until Gene's death from a
stroke on March 18, 1999. Mamie Till-Mobley died of heart failure in 2003, aged
81. The same year, her autobiography (written with Christoper Benson), Death
of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime that Changed America, was
published.
INTERNET SOURCE: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/07/us/mamie-mobley-81-dies-son-emmett-till-slain-in-1955.html
January 7,
2003
Mamie Mobley, 81, Dies; Son, Emmett Till, Slain in 1955
By JOHN W.
FOUNTAIN
CHICAGO,
Jan. 6— Nearly 50 years after the death of her son, Emmett
Till, who was murdered and thrown into a river in Mississippi, Mamie Till
Mobley died here today, still clinging to the hope for justice. She was 81.
The Rev.
Jesse Jackson, speaking tonight at a news conference on behalf of the family
inside her home, said Mrs. Mobley had been having dialysis about three times a
week for some time and that she suffered cardiac arrest today. Family members
said she was rushed to Jackson Park Hospital, where she died about 2:30 p.m.
After the
killing of her 14-year-old son in 1955 in Money, Miss., Mrs. Mobley allowed his
mutilated body to be displayed in an open coffin during his funeral service,
where mourners recoiled at the sight of Emmett's wounds.
His death
came to symbolize the brutality in the racist South and became a symbol of the
civil rights movement. Emmett was killed for supposedly whistling at a white
woman, an act that in the Jim Crow South could mean a lynching for a black man.
Mrs. Mobley
became an outspoken champion for children in poor neighborhoods and spent more
than half her life keeping alive the memory of Emmett and the hope of bringing
his killers to justice. At the time of her death, she was writing a book,
''Death of Innocence,'' which is to be published this fall by Random House.
No one was
ever convicted in her only son's death, a fact that drove Mrs. Mobley to speak
out about racial injustice for more than four decades.
''It was
very difficult; that's what kept her living all 81 years,'' said Airickca
Gordon, 33, a surrogate granddaughter, who was reared by Mrs. Mobley.
''Her
ultimate goal was to bring justice for what happened to her son. She was
constantly speaking on it, trying to get the story out,'' Ms. Gordon said.
''She was yet doing activist work. She never stopped. That's what kept her
going.''
Ms. Gordon
said she would most remember Mrs. Mobley for her spirit.
''Her will
and her spirit,'' she said, calling her ''a strong-willed woman.''
In addition
to writing the current book, with Chris Benson, a Chicago lawyer and author, on
her son's case, Mrs. Mobley is also featured in a new documentary, ''The Untold
Story of Emmett Louis Till,'' by Keith Beauchamp.
Mr. Jackson
praised Mrs. Mobley as a woman of strength who did not harbor hate and who used
her son's death to transform the lives of others.
''She was
still consoling and still teaching,'' Mr. Jackson said.
''What must
be put into perspective is that we often say the modern Civil Rights movement
began with Rosa Parks in Montgomery. That's really not accurate,'' Mr. Jackson
said. He said Emmett's murder ''broke the emotional chains of Jim Crow.''
''Mrs.
Mobley did a profound strategic thing,'' Mr. Jackson added. ''With his body
water-soaked and defaced, most people would have kept the casket covered. She
let the body be exposed. More than 100,000 people saw his body lying in that
casket here in Chicago. That must have been at that time the largest single
civil rights demonstration in American history.''
After
Emmett's death, Mrs. Mobley recently told The Times, ''at first, I just wanted
to go in a hole and hide my face from the world.''
But she
said she soon began to talk about her son's death and to sound the call for
justice.
''It
gives me a chance to get out what is clogged up inside, because if I don't
talk, it stays in and worries me,'' she said. ''If I can let it go, even though I cry sometimes, I have
some relief.''
She
believed that her son's dying ultimately was not in vain. And despite what was
done to him, Mrs. Mobley said, ''I have not spent one
minute hating.''
Services
are pending.
Photo:
Mamie Till Mobley, in 1995, with a photograph of her son, Emmett Till.
(Associated Press, 1995)
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