Behind the murder of Emmett Till lies a campaign of terror against Southern Negroes—and whites. Its aim—to halt the growing movement to apply the Supreme Court no-school-segregation decision.
Race hatred was whipped to a fever pitch following the widely-hailed high court ruling. Southern governors and congressmen openly called for flouting it. They were afraid—afraid of the new militancy and courage of Southern Negroes. And they were afraid of the new, but little-publicized, democratic feelings of many whites.
Example: a meeting this summer of 375 college students from 9 southeastern states at the Methodist Assembly Center, Lake Junalaska, North Carolina, unanimously adopted a resolution pledging support to the Supreme Court decision! They also called for an end to rules barring Negroes from swimming at the center.
Young white Southerners especially have been saying, “If it was left to us, school segregation would end tomorrow.� (This was why young people were kept off the Till murder jury!)
According to a dispatch from Orangeburg, South Carolina, in the ‘Pittsburgh Courier’ of Sept. 17, war has been declared on Negroes signing petitions for desegregation: “Public officials from the mayor of the city to the sheriff of the county are all mobilized in a campaign of terror, economic pressure and widespread firings. Enlisted in the campaign to subvert the US Supreme Court’s anti-bias decision are representatives of the New York Life Insurance Germany, Standard Oil, Coca Cola, Shell Oil and Ford Motors.�
SOME OF THE VICTIMS
Not long before the Till lynching, two men were murdered in Mississippi for urging Negroes to vote and for registering themselves—in May 1955, the Rev. George W. Lee; in August, Lamar Smith.
In September, 13 year-old Robert Lee Colbert, a Negro, was beaten by two men in Hampton, Georgia, for telling one of their sons to stop squirting water at him and two of his sisters.
ANTI-LABOR TERROR
When the Amalgamated Clothing Workers recently tried to organize shirt plants in Mississippi, their white organizers were kidnapped, whipped, and dumped in critical condition on lonely roads.
The Textile Workers Union has been trying to organize mills in Dalton, Georgia. Aid came from the Church of God, a group friendly to labor. Result: windows of a newspaper put out by the church were smashed. Belcraft Chenille Co. fired 23 Church of God members; Lawtex Corp. fired 28. All were white workers!
WHAT’S THE CONNECTION?
Race hatred is used to brand Negroes ‘inferior’ and keep them as a source of highly profitable cheap labor. Race hatred is used to split white workers and poor farmers from Negroes who are in the same boat. It’s the old divide-and-conquer technique.
It ends up with the lowest wage standards of any region in the US—for Negroes—and for whites. For the employers, many of them with main offices in Wall Street, the jimcrow system means an estimated $4.5 billion in extra profits!
IF YOU’RE A YOUNG WORKER: Your wage standards are in danger as more and more greedy employers ‘escape’ South to take advantage of lower scales, no unions, and local anti-labor laws.
Do you remember the battle in the last session of Congress for a $1.25 minimum wage with expanded coverage? Opposition from a coalition of Southern Dixiecrats and Northern Republicans resulted in a poor compromise—a $1 minimum with no increased coverage.
The only thing that keeps the Dixiecrats in the saddle is the fact that Negroes are kept from voting in most of the South!
IF YOU’RE A STUDENT
Especially a student in an overcrowded classroom. Again, the coalition of Dixiecrats and Republicans killed urgently-needed aid-to-education bills in the last session of Congress.
No one could have used such aid more than the white and Negro students of Mississippi, which spends the least per student of all states!
SUMMING IT UP
Southern bigots and the big Northern corporation owners who run most Southern industry and agriculture are afraid. They see a threat to their jimcrow system—to that $4.5 billion in extra profits—in the great movement to end school segregation.
Negro and white teen-agers going to Southern schools together could mean Negro and white adults joining unions together, working together for better conditions, voting together for liberal State and Congressional legislators.
This is behind the violent campaign against the Supreme Court decision and against the Constitution, which led to the brutal murder of Emmett Till.
A new award-winning documentary film, The Murder of Emmett Till, was released in 2003 by Firelight Media. New facts revealed by the film helped lead to the current federal investigation.
Firelight Media
www.firelightmedia.org
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Dynamic Magazine
