What can you say about tragedy?
When it’s imminent, you brace yourself and hope to come out unscathed. In its aftermath, you mourn and, eventually, you move on, healed… but not quite ever the same.
Still, what, exactly, can you say about tragedy? Plenty, as you’ll see in the book “In Remembrance of Emmett Till” by Darryl Mace, and the strongest words come from influential places.
Mamie Till-Mobley was born in Mississippi but, when she was just two years old, her family joined the Great Migration and settled in Chicago. They left a state where lynching was “an all-to-common experience for Blacks” and segregation was a way of life. Things were different in Illinois; there was still racism, but it wouldn’t likely kill anyone.
In this less-tumultuous place, Emmett Louis Till was born and raised and, due to his Chicago upbringing, “could not understand what it was like to be Black in Mississippi.” Still, as was the habit of many Midwestern African American families at that time, 14-year-old Emmett was sent to spend the summer with an uncle in the south.
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