Hardly a moment goes by when I don’t think about Emmett. There are constant reminders. I see his face everywhere. It is on my datebook, on the calendar on my wall, on a special T-shirt I wear. Everywhere. Pictures and mementos fill my house, his presence fills my life. At times I will think about something he said or did—something funny, something so many years ago—and it will still make me laugh, each time just like the first time. When I am out and about, people recognize me and they want to talk about him, what his death meant to them, what I mean to them still. They just can’t help it. On the news, there are human interest stories about mothers and sons and grandsons, and I find myself thinking about what life might have been like if I still had a son to look after me in my old age, or grandsons whom I might look after, and spoil rotten. Then there are the tragic reports of child abductions and hate crimes. I know about these things. I know about them the only way you really can know about them. And I quietly pray for the grieving mothers of other missing or murdered children, hoping they will find the peace and the meaning that took me so long to find. We are connected, these other mothers and I. We share a bond, the knowledge of an exclusive few: that there can be no greater suffering than the pain of a mother who must bury her child, and be left alone to wonder if there might have been even one small thing she could have done to make a difference.
Hardly a moment goes by when I don’t think about Emmett and the promise of a lifetime. There are constant reminders. But, then, a mother really doesn’t need reminders. Just as you always remember the agony of childbirth, you can never forget the anguish of losing a child. You don’t need to be reminded of the horror you have seen—even for a brief moment—in your boy’s battered body. That vision plays back forever like a perpetual nightmare. Emmett Louis Till, my only son, my only child, was kidnapped, tortured, and murdered at the hands of white racists on August 28, 1955. That was so many years ago, yet it seems like only yesterday to a mother who needs no reminders. After all, every shattered piece of my heart has its own special memory of Emmett.
They say there are lessons to be learned from every experience in life. It has taken practically all my life to sort out the lessons here. I couldn’t see how there might possibly be any good to come of something so evil. What could the lesson have been? How could anyone deserve this? Then there was the mistreatment, the indifference of those who I thought really cared, the betrayal by those I trusted, the injustice at the hands of the justice system.
It has taken all these years of quiet reflection to recognize the true meaning of my experience, and Emmett’s. It took quite a while for me to accept how his murder connected to so many things that make us what we are today. I didn’t see right away, but there was an important mission for me, to shape so many other young minds as a teacher, a messenger, an active church member. God told me, “I took away one child, but I will give you thousands.” He has. And I have been grateful for that blessing.
That is why, for forty-seven years, I wasn’t quite ready to write this book. It took a long time for me to reach this kind of deep understanding. I have been approached, oh, so many times by people who wanted to tell my story or put words in my mouth to tell their version of my story. But I just couldn’t do that. I owe Emmett more than that. I owe him the absolute understanding I finally have come to appreciate; the deep understanding of why he lived and died and why I was destined to live so long after his death. You see, my story is more than the story of a lynching. It is more than the story of how, with God’s guidance, I made a commitment to rip the covers off Mississippi, USA—revealing to the world the horrible face of race hatred. It is more than the story of how I took the privacy of my own grief and turned it into a public issue, a political issue, one which set in motion the dynamic force that led ultimately to a generation of social and legal progress for this country. My story is more than all of that. It is the story of how I was able to pull myself back from the brink of desolation, and turn my life around by digging deep within my soul to pull hope from despair, joy from anguish, forgiveness from anger, love from hate. I want people to know about all of that and how they might gain some useful understanding for their own lives from my experience. But I also want people to know my Emmett, the way they might have known him had they met him so many years ago—as the driven, industrious, clever boy that he was at age fourteen. Forever fourteen.
Thankfully, Emmett has helped to steer me in my lifelong odyssey. He does still. I often hear his voice guiding or chiding, the voice of a boy much older than his years. In fact, as I began discussions for this book, I sat down at my kitchen table, my workspace. As I sometimes do, I asked that a trifold picture frame of images of Emmett and me be taken down from atop the china hutch in my living room and placed on the table in front of me. I focused on my son while I considered this book. I scanned the pictures that portrayed a life from infancy through boyhood into adolescence. I prayed and asked for help in making this important decision. The result is in your hands. Now, only now, I can share the wisdom of my age. I am experienced, but not cynical. I’ve been disappointed by so many of the people I’ve trusted over the years, but still 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.
It is not that I dwell on the past. But the past shapes the way we are in the present and the way we will become what we are destined to become. It is only because I have finally understood the past, accepted it, embraced it, that I can fully live in the moment. And hardly a moment goes by when I don’t think about Emmett, and the lessons a son can teach a mother.