by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Three students at the University of Mississippi, a school commonly referred to as "Ole Miss," have been in the news lately for what some consider to be a college prank and others view as a racist insult. The three, only two of whom have so far been publicly identified, visited a roadside memorial to Civil Rights icon and lynching victim Emmett Till one night last March. Two of the youth were armed - one with a shotgun and the other with an AR-15 automatic rifle. The three posed in front of the bullet-riddled marker for a smiling photo, and then apparently called it a night.
Who took the photo?
A day or two later one of the young men posted the photo to his Instagram account where it promptly received nearly three hundred "likes."
Four months after that the national media finally became aware of the story.
The three young men, apparently including the one who has yet to be publicly named, were soon suspended from their social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, at the university. The university referred the matter on to the US Department of Justice and the police - and declined to take any action against the men.
Kappa Alpha is a social fraternity which focuses on southern heritage. Confederate General Robert E. Lee is regarded by members of the fraternity as its "spiritual founder." And Ole Miss, of course, has a long and complicated history with the American civil rights movement - and was a focus of racial controversy through much of the 1960's.
Ole Miss essentially took no action against the students other than passing information along to police agencies and the Justice Department. Now some administrators at Ole Miss are admitting that the school may have mishandled the recent uproar by not taking more assertive action over the photo of the armed and smiling young men at the Emmett Till memorial. The fraternity was quick to suspend all three, but the university handed the matter off to others. It also claimed not to know the identity of the third individual, even though the fraternity obviously did. At some point there appears to be a breakdown in communication between the university and one of its officially sanctioned social fraternities.
Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black youngster who was falsely accused of flirting with a white woman, was murdered by a group of hillbilly racists in 1955. Several sites in the area where he was murdered have been designated as historic sites. The site visited by the three Ole Miss students was the spot where Till's mangled body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. (His corpse had been dumped in the river after he was hanged.) The sign marking the event has been shot up and desecrated numerous times over the years since Till's death, and it has even been torn down and thrown in the river. Some seem adamant that the boy never be allowed to rest in peace.
Now three white college students, all of whom should have known better and had more respect for the child victim of a violent crime, have instead chosen to dishonor Emmett Till's memory themselves. Their smiling photo is a disgrace and a blight on the efforts of better people to bring the American South into the light of the 21st century.
The photo of the three young men at the Till memorial is a calendar shot of white privilege and racism. They sent a bad message to an America that is struggling to break free of malignant racial stereotypes, and the three hundred people who quickly "liked" that message - amplified it.
That insensitive photo may be representative of Donald Trump's America, but it is an anathema to many of the rest of us.
Those young men at Ole Miss have something that Emmett Till never got, the opportunity to grow up and grow old. Here's hoping they benefit and learn from this ugly incident and go on to be open-minded and productive citizens who recognize the worth in all people.
You have earned your right to eternal rest, Emmett Till. May you be granted the comfort of peace.
Citizen Journalist
Three students at the University of Mississippi, a school commonly referred to as "Ole Miss," have been in the news lately for what some consider to be a college prank and others view as a racist insult. The three, only two of whom have so far been publicly identified, visited a roadside memorial to Civil Rights icon and lynching victim Emmett Till one night last March. Two of the youth were armed - one with a shotgun and the other with an AR-15 automatic rifle. The three posed in front of the bullet-riddled marker for a smiling photo, and then apparently called it a night.
Who took the photo?
A day or two later one of the young men posted the photo to his Instagram account where it promptly received nearly three hundred "likes."
Four months after that the national media finally became aware of the story.
The three young men, apparently including the one who has yet to be publicly named, were soon suspended from their social fraternity, Kappa Alpha, at the university. The university referred the matter on to the US Department of Justice and the police - and declined to take any action against the men.
Kappa Alpha is a social fraternity which focuses on southern heritage. Confederate General Robert E. Lee is regarded by members of the fraternity as its "spiritual founder." And Ole Miss, of course, has a long and complicated history with the American civil rights movement - and was a focus of racial controversy through much of the 1960's.
Ole Miss essentially took no action against the students other than passing information along to police agencies and the Justice Department. Now some administrators at Ole Miss are admitting that the school may have mishandled the recent uproar by not taking more assertive action over the photo of the armed and smiling young men at the Emmett Till memorial. The fraternity was quick to suspend all three, but the university handed the matter off to others. It also claimed not to know the identity of the third individual, even though the fraternity obviously did. At some point there appears to be a breakdown in communication between the university and one of its officially sanctioned social fraternities.
Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old black youngster who was falsely accused of flirting with a white woman, was murdered by a group of hillbilly racists in 1955. Several sites in the area where he was murdered have been designated as historic sites. The site visited by the three Ole Miss students was the spot where Till's mangled body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River. (His corpse had been dumped in the river after he was hanged.) The sign marking the event has been shot up and desecrated numerous times over the years since Till's death, and it has even been torn down and thrown in the river. Some seem adamant that the boy never be allowed to rest in peace.
Now three white college students, all of whom should have known better and had more respect for the child victim of a violent crime, have instead chosen to dishonor Emmett Till's memory themselves. Their smiling photo is a disgrace and a blight on the efforts of better people to bring the American South into the light of the 21st century.
The photo of the three young men at the Till memorial is a calendar shot of white privilege and racism. They sent a bad message to an America that is struggling to break free of malignant racial stereotypes, and the three hundred people who quickly "liked" that message - amplified it.
That insensitive photo may be representative of Donald Trump's America, but it is an anathema to many of the rest of us.
Those young men at Ole Miss have something that Emmett Till never got, the opportunity to grow up and grow old. Here's hoping they benefit and learn from this ugly incident and go on to be open-minded and productive citizens who recognize the worth in all people.
You have earned your right to eternal rest, Emmett Till. May you be granted the comfort of peace.
1 comment:
Ole Miss reminds me of a football player I once heard about. Seems his team was being beaten badly. The guy who ended up with the ball ended up being physically manhandled during the powerful drubbing of the superior team. That team, like Ole Miss, was depleted of running backs and the quarterback was as calm as a fox with the hounds closing in.
As the team huddled the coach hollered from the sidelines "give the ball to Mulvaney."
The squad hollered back "Mulvaney don't want the ball."
Ole Miss is Mulvaney. They just don't want the ball. Yet until racism is eliminated root, trunk, branch, and leaf they, like each American, is going to get the ball.
There is just no excuse for clinging to the notion that one person is superior to another because of the color of their skin, their accent, their hair, their nation of origin, the place where their ancestors came from, who the love, who or what they worship, their gender, or any other miscellaneous bit a trivia about them. No excuse.
The culture that allows the haves to pit the have-nots against one another is un-American. The culture that allows hate groups to thrive is un-American.
If you can't respect your neighbor without regard to their race, creed, color, previous conditions of servitude, or other immutable political characteristic I suggest you go get a DNA test to see from whence you came. Read the results, talk about the results with your family, make a decision, and go back to where you came from.
And may God have mercy on their souls, for the fate of those who hate does not bode well.
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