\u201cThe Murder of Emmett Till\u201d \u00a0 (PBS Feb 2, 2021)\u00a0 Last night I stayed up late to watch the PBS documentary account of the torture and murder of the now-infamous young black boy, Emmett Till and his white killers in Mississippi. \u00a0 I had not watched Emmett Till for some years; \u00a0PBS\u2019s account will stay with me for a long time; today\u2019s post will stay too \u2014 Emmett and his fiercely brave mother; she insisted on her son\u2019s mutilated body be carried \u2014 in a deliberately open coffin by thousands of mourners. \u00a0Those thousands not only carried Emmett\u2019s bod; \u00a0 they carried his story across the nation. \u00a0 PBS tells us that Mrs. Rosa Parks soon after began and led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that broke open the deep south\u2019s segregated public bus system and began to open Alabama to revolutionary change. \u00a0Mrs. Rosa Parks discovered that no one would hire her \u2014 white punishment. \u00a0 Soon after, however, Mrs. Parks was invited to move to Detroit by John Conyers who connected her to the city\u2019s strong African American community. \u00a0She lived in Detroit until, at her death, the whole city in their many thousands, and the nation, mourned her passing.<\/p>\n
Have a blest week,<\/p>\n
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john sj<\/p>\n
p.s.\u00a0 No wonder I am very tired this morning; best to read the post out loud with pauses.<\/p>\n
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Today\u2019s Post –\u00a0February 3, 2021<\/strong><\/p>\n David Grubin to john jstsj<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve been telling the story of Tamara Lanier’s lawsuit against Harvard\u00a0 for control of an 1850 daguerreotype of her great-great-great grandfather, an enslaved man named Renty. The daguerreotype was commissioned by a celebrated Harvard professor – Louis Agassiz – to prove that Africans are a biologically inferior species. It’s in Harvard’s Peabody Museum now, and Lanier, appalled by its stated purpose, thinks of it as a family photo that she wants back so she can donate it to the African-American Museum in Washington.<\/p>\n We call the film\u00a0Free Renty: Lanier v. Harvard.<\/em><\/p>\n The film is in essence the story of an African-American woman’s struggle to reclaim her heritage, and dives into the explosive issues roiling all of us right now: white supremacy, the legacy of slavery, and reparations. \u00a0Because it’s a developing story – I’ve been following it for 18 months – I’ve had to stop until I can film again on the other side of the pandemic, whenever that may be. (I’ve edited the first 75 minutes of the film, and waiting now to see how it will end).<\/p>\n This has made me think of a poem that appeared recently in the New Yorker. Although it is right for this moment, I don’t know if you’ll feel it’s right for your blog. Nevertheless, you might be as moved as I was by the way in which this Hispanic poet who went to Yale articulates the contradictions that she has learned to embrace without reaching for any easy conclusions. It\u2019s called \u201c\u2018A Failed Essay on Privilege.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe Murder of Emmett Till\u201d \u00a0 (PBS Feb 2, 2021)\u00a0 Last night I stayed up late to watch the PBS documentary account of the torture and murder of the now-infamous young black boy, Emmett Till and his white killers in … Continue reading