Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed America - Softcover

Till-Mobley, Mamie; Benson, Christopher

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812970470 ISBN 13: 9780812970470

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2004

Inhaltsangabe

The mother of Emmett Till recounts the story of her life, her son’s tragic death, and the dawn of the civil rights movement—with a foreword by the Reverend Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

In August 1955, a fourteen-year-old African American, Emmett Till, was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. The killers were eventually acquitted.

What followed altered the course of this country’s history—and it was all set in motion by the sheer will, determination, and courage of Mamie Till-Mobley, whose actions galvanized the civil rights movement, leaving an indelible mark on our racial consciousness. Death of Innocence is an essential document in the annals of American civil rights history, and a painful yet beautiful account of a mother’s ability to transform tragedy into boundless courage and hope.

Praise for Death of Innocence

“A testament to the power of the indestructible human spirit [that] speaks as eloquently as the diary of Anne Frank.”—The Washington Post Book World

“With this important book, [Mamie Till-Mobley] has helped ensure that the story of her son (and her own story) will not soon be forgotten. . . . A riveting account of a tragedy that upended her life and ultimately the Jim Crow system.”—Chicago Tribune

“The book will . . . inform or remind people of what a courageous figure for justice [Mamie Till-Mobley] was and how important she and her son were to setting the stage for the modern-day civil rights movement.”—The Detroit News

“Poignant . . . In his mother’s descriptions, Emmett becomes more than an icon; he becomes a living, breathing youngster—any mother’s child.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“Powerful . . . [Mamie Till-Mobley’s] courage transformed her loss into a moral compass for a nation.”—Black Issues Book Review

Robert F. Kennedy Book Award Special Recognition • BlackBoard Nonfiction Book of the Year

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Mamie Till-Mobley died on January 6, 2003, at the age of eighty-one. Following the death of her only child, Emmett Till, she entered Chicago Teachers College in 1956, graduating cum laude and fifth in her class three and a half years later. In 1973, she earned a master’s degree in administration and supervision at Loyola University. Till-Mobley was a frequent lecturer throughout the country, recalling the struggle for civil rights and urging her listeners to be the best they could be.
 
A Chicago-based writer and lawyer, Christopher Benson has served as features editor for Ebony and as Washington editor for Ebony and Jet. He also contributed to The Washington Post, The Crisis, Chicago, and Reader’s Digest. Benson is the author of the novel Special Interest.

Von der hinteren Coverseite

There are many heroes of the civil rights movement--men and women we can look to for inspiration. Each has a unique story, a path that led to a role as leader or activist. "Death of Innocence is the heartbreaking and ultimately inspiring story of one such hero: Mamie Till-Mobley, the mother of Emmett Till--an innocent fourteen-year-old African-American boy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and who paid for it with his life. His outraged mother's actions galvanized the civil rights movement, leaving an indelible mark on American racial consciousness.
Mamie Carthan was an ordinary African-American woman growing up in 1930s Chicago, living under the strong, steady influence of her mother's care. She fell in love with and married Louis Till, and while the marriage didn't last, they did have a beautiful baby boy, Emmett.
In August 1955, Emmett was visiting family in Mississippi when he was kidnapped from his bed in the middle of the night by two white men and brutally murdered. His crime: allegedly whistling at a white woman in a convenience store. His mother began her career of activism when she insisted on an open-casket viewing of her son's gruesomely disfigured body. More than a hundred thousand people attended the service. The trial of J. W. Milam and Roy Bryant, accused of kidnapping and murdering Emmett (the two were eventually acquitted of the crime), was considered the first full-scale media event of the civil rights movement.
What followed altered the course of this country's history, and it was all set in motion by the sheer will, determination, and courage of Mamie Till-Mobley--a woman who would pull herself back from the brink of suicide to become ateacher and inspire hundreds of black children throughout the country.
Mamie Till-Mobley, who died in 2003 just as she completed this memoir, has honored us with her full testimony: "I focused on my son while I considered this book. . . . The result is in your hands. . . . I am experienced, but not cynical. . . . I am hopeful that we all can be better than we are. I've been brokenhearted, but I still maintain an oversized capacity for love." "Death of Innocence is an essential document in the annals of American civil rights history, and a painful yet beautiful account of a mother's ability to transform tragedy into boundless courage and hope.

"From the Hardcover edition.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

I will always remember the day Emmett was born. It was July 25, 1941. A Friday. But I’m getting a little ahead of my story, because this is not where it really begins. You see, my mother had brought me to the hospital on Wednesday. And the fact that it was my mother and not my husband who took me to the hospital to have a baby probably tells you just about everything you need to know about Louis Till. He was at work that day, I think. He worked at the Corn Products Refining Company in Argo, Illinois, where we lived, just outside Chicago. I guess you might call Argo a suburb, but it didn’t have anything at all in common with the big city, except for being close to it. It was a sleepy little town where whites called blacks by their first names and where blacks would never dare do the same thing. It was a place where most little black girls dropped out of school by age sixteen to get married and where I was considered an old maid because I had waited until I finished high school to marry Louis at age eighteen. That was just the year before. Argo was also a place where it seemed the greatest ambition of most black men, like my father and my husband, was to work for Corn Products, and the greatest ambition of their wives was to take care of things at home for their husbands. So it was with my mother, who did what my mother always seemed to be there to do. She took care of me, and on that Wednesday when she drove me to Cook County Hospital in Chicago, I really needed care. I was going into labor and I didn’t understand much about that except for this: those pains were talking to me. They were saying: "Any minute now, Mamie Till. Any minute, girl."

Now, Cook County was a public hospital and it was one place you were sure black folks could get treated. That’s not to say that we were treated well. The nurses decided right away that this was not an emergency. But, then, of course, they were feeling no pain. They put me into a room with another lady and it seems that I was the only one who noticed that this woman was screaming and hollering and cursing and she was going through every four-letter word she could think of, teaching me a few in the process. That was about the time my pain stopped. I felt so sorry for her that I forgot my own troubles. I got up out of my bed after everyone left and started trying to comfort her, help ease her pain. I didn’t understand a lot of things back then. I mean, I was so naive it wasn’t safe for me to walk the streets alone. And listening to the screams of that poor woman really frightened me because I didn’t understand any of it. My God, was this what was in store for me? No one had prepared me for any of this. Why hadn’t my mother talked to me about these things? And why on earth did this woman want to kill her husband? I guess it was her husband. "That man," I think is what she kept saying. Anyway, she told me that I would soon find out why.

Over the next couple of days, I was in and out of pain–terrible pain–and my mother was in and out of the room checking on things, taking care of me. That room always seemed dark, like a government office, not cheerful the way I thought it should look for such a blessed event. But that was Cook County Hospital. Louis never came to see about me. I would have thought that he would be excited about the baby, but he didn’t seem to care. On Friday during one of my mother’s visits, I told her what I had been telling the nurses: that I needed to go, that if the pain was a sign, then it was definitely time. I didn’t think I could take another minute of it. But they weren’t paying me any attention. Mama asked if my water had broken. I told her I thought it had and that I had asked somebody to come and change my bed. But when they didn’t, I just pulled the blanket up and got back on top of the bed. Well, Alma Gaines was having none of that. My mother called the nurse, who checked my situation and quickly got me into the labor room. And that’s where things really got serious. The doctor there began to examine me. He said something that I didn’t get, but I could hear the urgency in his voice. What I understood was that they had to get busy. They had to take my baby. The baby was coming butt first. It was a breech birth. I had no idea how serious that could be, but even I understood the anxiety I heard in the doctor’s voice, and the tense way things were moving in that room.

"What have you been doing?" he asked, like he was accusing me of murder.

Now I knew; it was my fault. Whatever was happening to my baby was all my fault. The only thing I could recall was that Louis and I had moved into a new place not that long before all of this. As the medical team rushed to prep me, I thought about that move from my mother’s house to a little apartment down the street. I was so proud of that little place, our first apartment. I had bought curtains. Everything had to be perfect. I mean, I was such a perfectionist. And now, of course, I know better, but I didn’t know anything then. I was hanging curtains and I was cleaning cobwebs high up on the windows. And somebody came by and saw me and told me I shouldn’t reach overhead like that. So, it was my fault that all this was happening, all because I wanted a nice, clean place for the baby to live and play. Now, in the delivery room, I was being punished for it, but I didn’t want my baby to have to suffer for my mistake. The agony was so severe, I finally understood why that woman back in the room wanted to kill "that man." Somehow, though, I didn’t think that would help. At that moment, I thought there could be no greater pain than giving birth to a child. I couldn’t imagine then how much more pain a mother might have to endure. Someone placed a cone over my mouth and told me to count backward from one hundred. The last thing I remember was ". . . ninety-nine . . ."

When I finally awakened, it seemed as if I had been dreaming. I was back in the room, but there was no baby there. In fact, I had never even seen my baby. I wanted to know where they had taken the baby. All they told me was that I was very sick, and they really didn’t want to bring him to me and they had taken him to do whatever it is they do to babies. "Him." A boy. I kept insisting on seeing my baby boy and, finally, they gave in and brought him to me, probably just to keep me quiet, knowing how mothers are. But I didn’t care. I was so happy to see my baby, all six and three-quarters pounds of him.
Happy, that is, until I looked down at him in my arms.

I reacted right away with a frown. "Oooh, no . . ."I said, before thinking much about it.
His skin color was very, very light and he had blond hair and blue eyes. I looked up at the nurse, but I was assured that they had handed me the right baby. There was more. It had been such a difficult birth that they had used forceps and clinched him at the temples. He was scarred on his forehead and on the nose, and his little face looked distorted. My reaction must have startled him. His eyes grew wide, and he began to cry.

I pulled him closer to my bosom and rocked him gently. "Oh, honey. Mama loves you."
That was our first connection, mother and son. I was so contrite after that and I would remember all of my life how my son looked when he came into the world, and how I reacted to it.

The attending nurse needed a name to complete the birth certificate form. I had been ready for some time. Now, this was long before you could tell what sex a baby was going to be ahead of time, the way people do these days. But I just knew I would have a boy. After all, I had decided, a boy first, then a girl, then another boy and then another girl. So,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2004
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0812970470
• ISBN 13: 9780812970470
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 337
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland