Why is there still no justice for Emmett Till?
Al JazeeraThe Jim Crow era may be gone but its spirit is alive and well. White womanhood and keeping Black men ‘in their place’ Sixty-six years ago, Till’s mutilated body was fished out of the Tallahatchie River in Mississippi. I’m likely to kill him.” Keeping Black men in their place was central to how white America enforced anti-Black racism and designed segregation during the Jim Crow era, which lasted from the end of the Civil War in the 1860s to the late 1960s. These repeated failures of the US authorities to deliver justice for the murder of a Black boy allow white America to find comfort in knowing that the deadly racialisation of Black men during the Jim Crow era still has currency today. In this context, the failure to deliver justice for Till’s murder reflects a white society recommitting itself to public displays of white supremacy and racial violence against Black people.