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Old 01-07-2003, 07:03 AM
CrimsonTide4 CrimsonTide4 is offline
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Unhappy Emmitt Till's Mother Passes Away

Lynching victim's mom dies on eve of Atlanta visit

By BOB LONGINO
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution




1995 photo by BETH A. KEISER / AP
Emmett Till's mother, Mamie Till Mobley was to have spoken at Ebenezer Baptist Church on Wednesday.


Mamie Till Mobley, whose courage amid racial adversity in the South made her an inspiration to the civil rights movement, died Monday in Chicago one day before she was to travel to Atlanta to speak about the 1955 lynching in Mississippi of her only son, Emmett Till.

Mrs. Mobley, at 81, was just beginning to travel more extensively in connection with a book she was co-writing about her life before and after her son's murder.

She died of heart failure in the emergency room of Chicago's Jackson Park Hospital, a family member said.

"She was being driven to dialysis treatment and just didn't look well so they took her to the emergency room and that's when she transitioned at about 2:30 p.m.," said Bertha Thomas, Mrs. Mobley's niece.

Gatling's Chapel in Chicago is handling arrangements. Services are incomplete.

"She was a delightful storyteller and a great conversationalist," said Chris Benson, who was writing "Death of Innocence" with her.

Mrs. Mobley's death comes amid new interest by documentarians and writers in her son's slaying. "The Death of Emmett Till" will air Jan. 20 on GPTV for PBS' "American Experience." A second documentary -- "The Untold Story of Emmett Till," featuring never-before-heard witnesses to his death -- is unfinished but is expected to be previewed Saturday at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Historic Site.

Emmett Till was beaten to death in late summer 1955 after he purportedly whistled at a white woman in a tiny country store in the Mississippi Delta.

Three days later, he was abducted by at least two white men, including the woman's husband.

Days later his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, pummeled nearly beyond recognition and, with a 70-pound cotton gin fan, tethered by barbed wire strung around his neck.

It was Mrs. Mobley's decision, shortly after she viewed her son's body, to have an open-casket funeral in Chicago. It galvanized and outraged African-Americans across the nation.

The two white men were quickly tried and acquitted.

Mrs. Mobley was to appear Wednesday at Ebenezer Baptist Church as part of closing ceremonies for "Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America." To date, the exhibit has drawn more than 160,000 visitors.

She was 33 during the trial in Sumner, Miss. Her first husband had died 10 years earlier and she had remarried and at the time went by the name Mamie Bradley.

During the trial, in an overheated, humid courtroom, she sat at a table the judge had reserved for the black press and for U.S. Rep. Charles Diggs. The trial was held not far from her birthplace in Webb, Miss.

When she was called to the witness stand on the morning of Sept. 21, 1955, the courtroom immediately fell silent. She was wearing a gray-flowered dress, a brown bolero jacket, a black hat, tortoise shell glasses and a gold watch with a wide band, news reports said.

She maintained her composure during the attorneys' examination -- until she was shown the photograph of her son's bloated body, the one that had sent a shock of outrage throughout black America after it had appeared in Jet magazine.

She struggled, regained her steadiness and continued to answer questions, even when defense attorneys, seeking to suggest some other cause of her son's death, grilled her on whether she had life insurance policies.

She testified she had instructed her son how to behave in the South. "I told him he would have to be careful all the time . . . to say yes, sir, and yes, ma'am at all times . . ."

Asked by a defense attorney if he was coached to not insult white women, she responded, "I just said white people."
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