A Psalm for Emmett Till
RENÉE WATSON
August 28, 2020
The brutal abduction and murder of 14-year-old African American Emmett Till in Mississippi on August 28, 1955, galvanized the emerging Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr. called his murder “one of the most brutal and inhumane crimes of the 20th century.” – Biography
But what I don’t know is your favorite color, or your favorite bubble gum flavor. I don’t know if you liked winter days, if you ever left the imprint of your body in the snow to make an angel. And I want to know the song that you couldn’t stop listening to, singing it in your head, over and over. What was the song? I want to know the games you liked to play, if you ever climbed a tree, swam in a lake, looked up at the night sky and made a wish. And I want to know who you thought you might become. Your mother told us you were good at science, that you loved art. I wonder if you had lived, would your masterpieces be in a gallery or maybe you would have kept them to yourself—hidden treasures in a notebook, or maybe you would have been an art teacher. Or maybe you would have been a baseball player. I am told you were good at that, too. So many talents, raw and pliable. There is a tale told of you baking a cake for your mother and you were young and boy and not good at baking, but still, you loved your mother, so you tried. The cake did not taste good at all, and that became a family joke. Had you lived, you might have gotten better at baking. And maybe you would have become a renowned pastry chef and every time you’d be interviewed, you’d tell the story of the horrible cake and you’d look back at how far you’d come, at how much you’d grown. Maybe. These are things I do not know. But I do know you were not just a Chicago boy meeting Mississippi, not just a whistling boy, a kidnapped boy, a brutalized boy, a bloated boy with a ring on his finger, not just a boy in an open casket, not just a buried boy, a gone boy. You were a boy with a favorite dessert, a favorite place to play, a favorite joke to tell. You were a boy with a favorite song—a song that you couldn’t stop listening to, couldn’t stop singing it in your head, over and over. What was the song? Had you kept living, maybe you would sing us that song, teaching us the original version. By now the song would be remixed, new verses added, but still the same.
And the record keeps spinning, scratched and stuck on the chorus. So many verses etched in the vinyl. So many unfinished songs.
Your name, the refrain: Emmett Till. Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, Jr., Henry Dumas, Fred Hampton, Mulugeta Seraw, Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Aiyana Jones, Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Michelle Cusseaux, Akai Gurley, Tanisha Anderson, Tamir Rice, Tanisha Fonville, Ezell Ford, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Sandra Bland, Alton Sterling, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, Botham Jean, Aura Rosser, Atatiana Jefferson, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks
and this is to say, since you were taken away from us, so much has changed and everything is the same. But always, your name is spoken. Like a holy chant, a rally cry, a prayer. We cannot, will not forget you. You are the song stuck in our hearts. And the record keeps spinning, spinning.
View this video work of Renée reading A Psalm for Emmett Till.