The Life of Emmett Till: A voice crying for justice

"I hear a whistling through the water.
Little Emmett won't be still.
He keeps floating round the darkness,
Edging through the silent chill.
Tell me, please,

That bedtime story of the fairy River Boy
Who swims forever, deep in treasures,
Necklaced in a coral toy." - James Emanuel

To his mother, Mamie Carthan, he caused a painful birth. To the rest of his family he was a cocksure and debonair boy, born out of timing. They all agree that he was very mature for his fourteen short years he spent on Earth. He was raised by women, his mother and grandmother, in a time when segregation and hate was the law. However, to the cowards that murdered Emmett Till he was another 'strange fruit', deserving to be cut down!

As Till was about to embark on his trip from Chicago to Mississippi his mother cautioned him about how he should behave 'in front of whites in the South'. Meanwhile, Till, born a freethinker, with the soul of a rebel had imagined things differently. He had envisioned something bigger; an integrated America, even in the Segregated South. His mother later remarked that Till "did not know his own limitations at times". He had brought with him a picture of how things were back in his hometown of South Side Chicago; a picture of blacks and whites living together, he had brought hope.

Emmett Till's crime was that he flirted with Carolyn Bryant, a white woman. He may have touched her hand as he paid for his bubble gum in the grocery store she ran. Till, who was a stutterer was known to whistle to help him pronounce words starting with the letter 'b'. Bryant was so upset at what she thought was a pass at her, that she left the store to retrieve a pistol from her car. Till escaped her wrath, but later faced the wrath of her husband. After all, this account made his crime punishable by death.

Kidnapped, beaten repeatedly, shot and maimed, his remains were found days later in the Tallahassee River swollen and disfigured 'weighted to the fan blade, which was fastened around his neck with barbed wire'. During the five day trial a prosecuting attorney remarked that what "Till did was wrong, but it warranted a spanking, not murder". The suspects, Roy Bryant and his brother J. W. Milam, were acquitted of his murder after the jury in the case deliberated for exactly one hour and seven minutes. The men later admitted to his murder and were never brought to justice.

'Well, what else could we do? He was hopeless. I'm no bully; I never hurt a nigger in my life. I like niggers—in their place—I know how to work 'em. But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice. As long as I live and can do anything about it, niggers are gonna stay in their place. Niggers ain't gonna vote where I live. If they did, they'd control the government. They ain't gonna go to school with my kids. And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he's tired o' livin'. I'm likely to kill him. Me and my folks fought for this country, and we got some rights. I stood there in that shed and listened to that nigger throw that poison at me, and I just made up my mind. 'Chicago boy,' I said, 'I'm tired of 'em sending your kind down here to stir up trouble. Goddam you, I'm going to make an example of you—just so everybody can know how me and my folks stand.'

J. W. Milam, Look magazine, 1956

'If the facts as stated in the Look magazine account of the Till affair are correct, this remains: two adults, armed, in the dark, kidnap a fourteen-year-old boy and take him away to frighten him. Instead of which, the fourteen-year-old boy not only refuses to be frightened, but, unarmed, alone, in the dark, so frightens the two armed adults that they must destroy him.... What are we Mississippians afraid of?'

William Faulkner, "On Fear", 1956

Till's murder, funeral, and the trial that ensued aroused much suspicion of the idea of justice, especially from the media and several religious organizations. His ordeal not only inspired the Civil Rights Movement but also several other important works including the Civil Rights Act of 1957, Langston Hughes' "Mississippi - 1955", Rod Serling's "Noon on Doomsday", James Baldwin's "Blues For Mister Charlie", Bob Dylan's "The Death of Emmett Till", and even later Toni Morrison's "Dreaming Emmett".

Emmett Till's voice deserves to be heard loud and clear in a 21st century America; an America that has backpedalled on her promises and has betrayed her citizenry as the urban youth still lay on the altar as sacrificial lamb. The Emmett Tills of our day are the Trayvon Martins, but why do we continue to allow unjust laws to destroy families and communities? How many mothers will have to weep because of stories we refuse to tell? What would Emmett say from the grave if we could hear him today? Would he shriek in pain like he did in 1955? Would he say 'my murder was in vain'?

Celestial North Korea

"Heaven's here on earth;

In our faith in humankind

In our respect for what is earthly

In our unfaltering belief in peace and love and understanding." - Tracy Chapman, Heaven's Here On Earth

Heaven has been imagined and re-imagined for centuries by the dreamers and prophets deluded. In the Bible heaven is described as a city where the streets are made of pure gold, where our creator will wipe away all our tears, and the lion will lie down with the lamb, according to one prophet. There will also be multi-winged seraphims and cherubims on every corner, crying to one another 'Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory'. This sounds like eternal bliss, right?

I don't know about you, but if I had a friend, a parent or a lover that required praise and adoration every single hour of every single day I would extricate myself from their presence. I would think of them as egocentric and maniacal, at the least. Imagine your mother telling you that you MUST constantly thank her for everything she has ever done for you. As much as I love my mother, I would be forced to take her to a mental hospital. But, this is a promise of heaven. Yes, you will get to/have to praise God all day long! Oh, imagine the endless joy!

You will get to walk on golden streets and milk and honey flow eternally, they say, but what's the catch? This will all happen after you die. I don't know about you, but to me this story reeks of suspicion. You are asking me to endure suffering on Earth, with the one life I know I have to reap the possibility of paradise after I die? What if you get there and you don't like it? Can you leave? What of the beauty that is all around us? What if heaven is the joy we feel when children laugh? What if we experience heaven in every moment of ecstasy?

"They say in heaven
There's no husbands and wives
On the day that I show up
They'll be completely out
Of their forgiveness supplies." - Brand New, You Won't Know

I Turn The Music Up To Keep Moving

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Can you for a second imagine life without music? I know I couldn't stomach the infinite silence. Music can be many things for different people. For me it has been a way out of my own darkness; music haunts me, yet fills me with wonder. There are hundreds of categories of music and like language music has evolved over time, as more and more genres have been developed. My varied taste in music make artistes like Nina Simone, Radiohead, and Bjork among my top favorites.

Nina Simone, born Eunice Kathleen Waymon, used her music as a voice for civil rights. Nina's style ranges from classical to the blues, from jazz to folk. The "High Priestess of Soul" was equally fluent in R&B, gospel, and pop. Her voice, simultaneously sultry and soaring, soothed the wounds of a bitter era and carried the dream of Dr. Martin Luther King even farther after his death. Some of my favorites from her include, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood", "Feeling Good", and "Ne me quitte pas".

Radiohead revolutionized the way I listened to music. When I was introduced to Radiohead in 2007, I was forced to think between the lines and notes, and see what was simmering below the surface. This alternative rock quintet's music is transformative, as they have experimented with disparate sounds and styles since their 1993 debut single, the minimalist to crescendoing 'Creep' to their latest album 'The King of Limbs', which is a study in the exploration of rhythm and textures. Among my favorite Radiohead singles are "Fake Plastic Trees", "Karma Police", "House of Cards", and "Lotus Flower".

The genres that attempt to describe her eclectic work has been Alternative rock, electronica, trip-hop, experimental, avant-garde, ethereal wave, jazz, and post-punk. Yet none of these even come close to defining Björk's music. Her music is raw, passionate, and explosive. Every track is a sacrifice of herself; her blood, sweat and tears. Favorites of mine from Bjork are 'Venus as a Boy', 'Army of Me', 'Pagan Poetry', 'Alarm Call', and 'All is full of Love'.
  

Today, I can say unwaveringly that I am alive because of the music that kept me going. On the darkest, lowest days of my young life these artistes, among countless others, reminded me that there's enough to hold on for. I am a better man because of the music that made me.

Undefined

"If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other people's fantasies for me and eaten alive." - Audre Lorde

self:  O.E. self, seolf, sylf "one's own person, same," "separate, apart"

"Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth." [Alan Watts]

To have you define me would be unjust

The business of definition belongs to the defined.

Your book defines me as 'black, but comely'

Your book is mistaken in this regard

I stand silhouetted in the light

I am black AND comely

Unapologetic

Bent,

I am,

Unfurling

Tried;

I stand the test of time

Feminist, writer, freethinker, equality seeker

Are adjectives that attempt to define me

Progressive pragmatic

Introverted excavator

Lucky and cursed

The only person I am better than is who I was yesterday

My sole competition stares back at me in the mirror.

Knocked down

Cut off

Left out

Brooding

I left my blood running

In uncharted waters

I swim

I will compromise, but never surrender

Even though I've tried to give up one too many times

I am

Limitless

Impatient

Unlimited

Enigma,

Unwritten

I am undefined...

"How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities." — Anaïs Nin

 https://suite101.com/deroux-alexander/undefined

Structuralism

"Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society." ~ Michel Foucault

Pure Heroine

“Meow” means “woof” in cat.”  ― George Carlin

Jamaica is a small island nation, the fifth largest in the Caribbean with 2.7 million inhabitants. The indigenous people, the Taíno, called it Xaymaca in Arawakan, meaning the "Land of Wood and Water" or the "Land of Springs". Among other things, Jamaica is famous for it's Reggae music and the highest murder rate in the region. We boast about many popular Jamaicans and the work they have done for the world to see. Marcus Garvey, Bob Marley, Usain Bolt, et al. But too often we overlook the heroes at home who have helped shaped our nation and put aspects of our culture on the map.

Louise Bennett-Coverley, affectionately called Miss Lou, was a Jamaican poet, folklorist, writer, and educator. She wrote and performed her poems and songs in Jamaican Patois or Creole. She was instrumental in giving our "dialect" a face as well as a spine; giving it literary recognition in its own right as a national language, at the heart of the Jamaican poetic tradition.

While the Jamaican upper classes turned up their noses at the local dialect, Miss Lou was adamant that patois was not 'bad English' as many thought. She insisted, against much opposition, that our language is not vulgar and we should take pride in it. Always with a smile and a clap of her hand she gave selflessly to forward Patois' cause.

DUTTY TOUGH

Sun a shine but tings no bright;
Doah pot a bwile, bickle no nuff;
River flood but water scarce, yawl
Rain a fall but dutty tough.

Tings so bad dat nowadays when

Yuh ask smaddy how dem do
Dem fraid yuh tek it tell dem back,
So dem no answer yuh.

No care omuch we dah work fa

Hard-time still een we shut;
We dah fight, Hard-time a beat we,
Dem might raise we wages, but
One poun gawn awn pon we pay, an

We no feel no merriment

For ten poun gawn pon we food
An ten pound pon we rent!
Saltfish gawn up, mackerel gawn up.
Pork en beef gawn up,
An when rice and butter ready
Dem just go pon holiday!

Claht, boot, pin an needle gawn up’

Ice, bread, taxes, water-rate
Kersene ile, gasolene, gawn up;
An de poun devaluate.
De price of bread gawn up so high
Dat we haffi agree
Fi cut we yeye pon bred an all
Tun dumplin refugee

An all dem marga smaddy weh

Dah gwan like fat is sin
All dem-deh weh dah fas wid me
Ah lef dem to dumpling!

Sun a shine an pot a bwile, but

Things no bright, bickle no nuff
Rain a fall, river dah flood, but,
Water scarce and dutty tough

A grateful nation remembers Miss Lou as one of Jamaica's preeminent cultural ambassadors and a heroine in her own right. Her work has inspired generations of Jamaicans, both at home and in the diaspora. Our local dialect is among one of our proudest exports.

I Have Decided

"I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

Once upon a time a walked with a load. I had chosen to hate those who hated me. To return malice with malice, an eye for an eye. This was the old me, what I had been taught and had to unlearn. It was the easiest way; for my ego, to feel even, for a false sense of balance.

Some have argued that hate is not real. That the opposite of love is indifference. Some argue that love is not real, not because it is intangible but more than likely because sometime or another they've confused love with lust or infatuation.

While, love and hate are both emotional states of mind that is about as much as they share in common. Hate is for the weak, while love is for the strong. Hate is bred from cowardice, while love is an act of the brave. Love is without condition, but hate is dependent on intolerance and a lack of understanding.

Love is not lust filled with sentimentality as some may think; sappy and emotional. As I grew older, I grew up and gave up on hate, because I have found that love is the ultimate liberator. You walk lighter and with a clear conscience when love is your way. The path may not be easy, but it will always be worth it.