Happy Birthday Emmett

Wow, if not for some band of racist cowards or possible disease or illness took your life, you would have been 72 years old today. I have defended your name with a ferocity I rarely display and I do so because your name, the boy you were deserved that at the very least. I cannot imagine what your last minutes were like before you were slain, I don't even want to try putting myself in your shoes then, but you didn't deserve such treatment. Ever since I learned of your story, it's incensed me to think that someone else had the right to arbitrarily take your life. They didn't care about who you were, or what you may have become, and they didn't care about who loved you. The fact is, they didn't see you as a boy at all, they saw you as a thing, a thing.

We are still dealing with that very thing all these years later. Young men, much like yourself are being killed and are dropping at ridiculous rates, not just by those that looked like your pack of murderers, but by those that look like you as well. I often wonder if they knew of you and your story, would that have any effect on them, would it change them for the better, or are they just too far gone and see each other as things and nothing more.

Recently all I have been hearing is how race has nothing to do with why things are the way they are. Like this asshole named Ted Nugent who is under the impression that we are the cause for our own suffering. Not that those decision makers in Washington D.C. who cut programs designed to help the inner cities, and starve them of necessary resources has anything to do with what we as a people go through and deal with. Emmiett, you know like I do that they are a bunch of liars.

On what would be your 72nd birthday I want to apologize for the way your name has been forgotten, misused, and disrespected by those that don't look like you and by those that do. I want to let you know that as long as I can draw breath into my body, I will always defend your name as emphatically as I do my own. I also want to thank you for shaking so many from their slumber. Nothing good came from your death, but your death was not in vain. Your mother and her courage sparked a movement Emmett, and that movement eventually landed a Black man in the White House.

Happy Birthday Mr Till, and may you continue to rest in eternal peace.

Respectfully,

Mark