On a sunny August day in 1955, Carolyn Bryant told a lie and had a child murdered. An all-white jury determined that, while Emmett Till had been brutally beaten, tortured, and lynched, there was no crime committed.
It’s odd, but I think about Emmett Till often. There is not a reason, I am not connected to his life or murder in any way. Yet I often find my mind drifting to his short life, and injustice after injustice was heaped upon him. From the false accusation and being tortured to death, to his killers making money off of his murder after they were found not guilty. To Carolyn Bryant, living out the rest of her days in peace and tranquility, never suffering so much as social stigma for her choice that resulted in murder.
I think about how if those white men had committed that same crime against a dog or a cow, they might have been arrested. Cruelty to animals is illegal. In the white American consciousness, we don’t even rise to the rank of animals.
It is on days like today that it’s difficult to maintain faith that we can force this country to live up to her own goddamn values. It is days like today when the sentiment “burn it all down” resonates in my nervous system, even while I acknowledge that burning a house down with people inside is perhaps just as unethical as the mess we’re all currently living in.
Like Carolyn Bryant, the United States throws her flagrant mockery of justice in our faces by simply continuing to thrive. Undisturbed. Unbothered. Enjoying life. Completely erasing the lives that were taken in the process. There are pools to swim and tans to collect and drinks to imbibe. No one here is guilty. Stop obsessing over the past.
Good vibes only, babes.
As an abolitionist, I did not want Bryant thrown in jail. I believe revenge and justice are mutually exclusive. I reject that ideology that says harm + harm = justice. Locking humans in cages does not become moral or righteous simply because we have collectively decided that someone is bad. But I have to admit I at least wanted her to feel bad. Apparently even feigned remorse is too much to ask.
As a human, the idea that one can simply get away with murder and enjoy the rest of their life, unbothered, is hard for me to stomach. Even as I’m writing this, tears in my eyes, I feel the simmering of a migraine starting.
It is on days like today that I have to reflect deeply on my ancestors, who somehow managed - through sheer force of will - to survive this shithole country. I am related to people who survived the middle passage and forced marches in chains, while pregnant and menstruating, from Virginia to Georgia. My ancestors’ stories still exist. Their lives and experiences are encoded in my DNA. I carry their trauma, their resilience, their defiance in my body.
America is Carolyn Bryant. Beautiful. Unbothered. Guilty as sin.
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