An Intersectional Feminist Perspective of Emmett Till in Young Adult Literature

Emmett Till’s murder inspired many novelists, poets, and artists. Recently, Till has inspired several feminist young adult novelists who are introducing his case in an intersectional way to a new generation of readers. The works that I have studied are A Wreath for Emmett Till (2003) by Marilyn Nelson, The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010) by Suzanne Collins, and Midnight without a Moon (2017) by Linda Jackson. By examining how the authors employ a feminist perspective, readers can understand how they are striving for a more inclusive, intersectional feminist movement. This is significant because the publishing industry, specifically for Young Adult Literature, is not diverse. These works, while often overlooked by critics, may be the first exposure most young readers have to Emmett Till. Each of these novels could be used to teach readers not only about Till’s case, but also about current events to help foster a multicultural consciousness

Mamie Till-Mobley: Paradox and Poetics of Racialized Public Motherhood in Chinonye Chukwu’s Till (2022)

Through an analysis of Chinonye Chukwu’s 2022 film Till, this article explores how Mamie Till-Mobley’s motherhood is cinematically represented. Focusing on director Chinonye Chukwu’s matrifocal lens, it analyzes racialized public motherhood and its painful containment of mothers within the institution of motherhood alongside radical and life-affirming possibilities for mothering in the wake of Black maternal necropolitics. This article looks at how racialized public motherhood allows mothers to continue the work of mothering and affirming their children’s humanity and the value of their lives even when all that remains of them is their dead bodies. It explores the multiple, often difficult strategies Mamie Till-Mobley employed in the fight to lovingly shape the meaning of her son’s life and death that have profoundly changed the course of American history. In this way, I connect this historical example of racialized public motherhood in Mamie’s practice to its contemporary, local, and intersectional implications. This article highlights the long line of Black maternal activists that have followed Mamie, as Black children are still dying from police violence and other forms of anti-Blackness, and closes with reflections on the cost to Black mothers and the tensions around Black women’s subjectivity. It aims to show how continued racial violence in the United States necessarily connects the struggle of mothers across temporalities

Policing the Boundaries of Whiteness: The Tragedy of Being “Out of Place” from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin

This Article takes what many view as an extraordinary case about racial hatred from 1955, the Emmett Till murder and trial, and analyzes it against the Trayvon Martin killing and trial outcome in 2012 and 2013. Specifically, this Article exposes one important, but not yet explored similarity between the two cases: their shared role in policing the boundaries of whiteness as a means of preserving the material and the psychological benefits of whiteness. This policing occurred in a variety of forms, including: (1) maintaining white racial separation; (2) facilitating cross-class, white racial solidarity; (3) articulating blackness, and specifically black maleness, as a threat; and (4) regulating the presence and movement of Blacks in what sociologist Elijah Anderson has defined as “the white space.” This Article also delineates how the strategies, practices, and tactics for protecting whiteness and its attendant advantages and benefits have shifted from explicit actions in thwarting, punishing, and even violently resisting challenges to black racial subordination and white authority to ostensibly “race-neutral” actions that promote a type of thinking that legal scholar Ian Haney López calls “commonsense racism,” and that sustain a form of rationalizing racial inequities and injustices that sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva refers to as “colorblind racism.” Ultimately, this Article demonstrates how the same race-based forces and the same racist tropes that undergirded the Till case in 1955 are still operating today, even as meaningful changes have occurred in the practice of racism in the country

Reopening the Emmett Till Case: Lessons and Challenges for Critical Race Practice

As part of the symposium panel on Re- Trying Racial Injustices, I devote this Essay to an expansion of themes addressed in my earlier work on the reopening of civil rights era prosecutions. I draw upon this work, as well as upon the insights of my co-panelists Anthony Alfieri and Sherrilyn Ifill, to examine the reopening of the Emmett Till case and its critical race practice possibilities. In this Essay, I consider other aspects of these cleansing moments. Are they illusory? Do they provide a misleading sense of closure at the expense of the ongoing hard work of racial justice that leads up to -and must proceed from-those moments? What lessons or teaching moments might these cases create for critical race lawyers in their ongoing social justice work? In notable respects, the impetus to reopen long-dormant cases shares with critical legal theory a justified skepticism of the construct of finality and an idealistic vision of the possibilities for ultimate justice. Procedural and substantive bulwarks of finality may be necessary in a legalistic sense, but they do not signify closure or justice, particularly when structural inequality persists. Reopening, with its promise of restorative justice through racial healing and reconciliation, has the potential to provide the closure that mere finality lacks, but only if that restorative justice is authentic and far-reaching. This Essay proceeds to address the above concerns as follows. In Part I, I discuss the Emmett Till case in greater detail, with brief contextual reference to two historical eras that frame it chronologically and thematically: lynching in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries, and the civil rights movement of the mid-to late1950s. In Part II, I focus on the significance of the 2004 Till case reopening and lessons that it may offer for critical race practice. These lessons dovetail with recurrent questions in the literature of critical race theory and offer suggestions for fostering the integration of theory and practice (race praxis). Finally, I conclude that the Till case and other similar reopenings will yield transcendent meaning and closure only if a self-reflective approach propels them past the transitory cleansing moments toward a deeper commitment to restorative justice

The Emmett Till Generation: The Birmingham Children\u27s Crusade and the Renewed Civil Rights Movement

In 1954, two white men murdered an African American boy named Emmett Till; his death sparked a generation of children to take part in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. One particular event in Birmingham, Alabama sparked nationwide sympathy for the movement. This event, called the Children\u27s Crusade, highlighted the civil rights struggle in Birmingham by publishing images of children violently attacked by the police in newspapers and on television across the country. This media frenzy garnered sympathy from all Americans and ultimately led to the passing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, landmark civil rights legislation

Blackness and Disability and How Disability is Too Often Forgotten

Disability is commonly left out of discussions on intersectional oppression, and this omission and stigmatization of disability does us all a disservice. Black people are more likely to be disabled due to the continuous violence of racism, and black people and disabled people in their status as “other” often find themselves needing to prove their worth in a society that does not see their lives as unconditionally valuable. We cannot see the full picture on issues of oppression such as racism and sexism without considering disability

2015 February

Press releases for February of 2015

Good grief: an analysis of the character development of Tonya in August Wilson’s King Hedley II through the lens of “the five stages of grief”.

An actor who is portraying a grieving character can also grieve simultaneously about the character’s given circumstances, which affects the character development and mental health of the actor. This thesis assesses how the character Tonya, in August Wilson’s King Hedley II, engages with grief as an African American woman and offers a process for the actor to engage and disengage with loss. “Good Grief” will unpack Constantin Stanislavski’s system of acting, focusing on the Magic “If” and the given circumstances, while also introducing the “Five Stages of Grief” coined by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Through the scholarship of theatre practitioners and psychologists coupled with critical self-reflexive analysis, as it relates to constructing the character Tonya, I hypothesize that grief directly impacts character development