Posted on Mar 12, 2023
He was with Emmett Till the night he was murdered. The horror haunts him still
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https://www.npr.org/2023/03/12/ [login to see] /emmett-till-wheeler-parker
The horror happened 67 years ago, but it never left the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. It never will.
There are times even now, when he will break down in tears when he describes what happened that night in Mississippi in 1955. Still, the story must be told.
"It changed my life," said the 83-year-old Parker. "I promised God if he just saved my life, I was going to do right."
Parker was just 16 years old when his cousin and best friend, 14-year-old Emmett Till, was lynched. Till's murder would spur international outrage and propel the fight for justice and equality. Parker is the last living witness of the kidnapping.
"We're here now because he still speaks from the grave. His story resonates and brought about a lot of changes," said Parker, who is now the pastor of the Illinois church founded by Till's grandmother.
The horror happened 67 years ago, but it never left the Rev. Wheeler Parker Jr. It never will.
There are times even now, when he will break down in tears when he describes what happened that night in Mississippi in 1955. Still, the story must be told.
"It changed my life," said the 83-year-old Parker. "I promised God if he just saved my life, I was going to do right."
Parker was just 16 years old when his cousin and best friend, 14-year-old Emmett Till, was lynched. Till's murder would spur international outrage and propel the fight for justice and equality. Parker is the last living witness of the kidnapping.
"We're here now because he still speaks from the grave. His story resonates and brought about a lot of changes," said Parker, who is now the pastor of the Illinois church founded by Till's grandmother.
He was with Emmett Till the night he was murdered. The horror haunts him still
Posted from npr.org
Racism
Murder
American History
Religion
Christianity
Posted 1 y ago
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Indeed this incident sears our soul and I deeply admire his mother's decision to display her son's remains.
Rich
Rich
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KKK-Karen’s have always been dangerous.
1.) NATIONAL
'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi
August 28, 20194:20 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
“John Whitten was 7 at the time and still sticks with the version of the story he learned back then.
"Fella who came down here and got in trouble — overstepped his bounds to a degree some folks thought," says Whitten. "And they cured him of his problems."
Whitten sees no reason to commemorate Till's slaying.”
SOURCE : https://www.npr.org/2019/08/28/755024458/why-don-t-y-all-let-that-die-telling-the-emmett-till-story-in-mississippi
2.) 1955 August 28
Emmett Till is murdered
On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.
{ His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. }
SOURCE : https://www.history.com/.amp/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
Three days later two white men came in the middle of the night and took away Till at gunpoint. The men were Roy Bryant, the husband, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.
Four days after that Till was found dead in the Tallahatchie River north of town, his head wired to a big, heavy cotton gin fan.
The body was sent back to Chicago to his mother. His face was gone, his head partly crushed, his left eye hanging out of its socket. Only a ring told her that it was her son.
His mother had an open casket funeral so that everyone could see the savage thing that had been done. Jet magazine printed pictures, pictures burned into the brain of probably every grown black American of the time.
1.) NATIONAL
'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi
August 28, 20194:20 PM ET
Heard on All Things Considered
“John Whitten was 7 at the time and still sticks with the version of the story he learned back then.
"Fella who came down here and got in trouble — overstepped his bounds to a degree some folks thought," says Whitten. "And they cured him of his problems."
Whitten sees no reason to commemorate Till's slaying.”
SOURCE : https://www.npr.org/2019/08/28/755024458/why-don-t-y-all-let-that-die-telling-the-emmett-till-story-in-mississippi
2.) 1955 August 28
Emmett Till is murdered
On August 28, 1955, while visiting family in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till, an African American from Chicago, is brutally murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman four days earlier.
{ His assailants—the white woman’s husband and his brother—made Emmett carry a 75-pound cotton gin fan to the bank of the Tallahatchie River and ordered him to take off his clothes. The two men then beat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head and then threw his body, tied to the cotton gin fan with barbed wire, into the river. }
SOURCE : https://www.history.com/.amp/this-day-in-history/the-death-of-emmett-till
Three days later two white men came in the middle of the night and took away Till at gunpoint. The men were Roy Bryant, the husband, and his half-brother, J.W. Milam.
Four days after that Till was found dead in the Tallahatchie River north of town, his head wired to a big, heavy cotton gin fan.
The body was sent back to Chicago to his mother. His face was gone, his head partly crushed, his left eye hanging out of its socket. Only a ring told her that it was her son.
His mother had an open casket funeral so that everyone could see the savage thing that had been done. Jet magazine printed pictures, pictures burned into the brain of probably every grown black American of the time.
'Why Don't Y'all Let That Die?' Telling The Emmett Till Story In Mississippi
Emmett Till's 1955 lynching propelled the civil rights movement, but telling his story underscores a reluctance for some in Mississippi "to come to grips with its history of racial brutality."
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