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  • 2021-04-14 (xsd:date)
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  • Did Fred Hampton's Mother Babysit Emmett Till? (en)
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  • In Judas and the Black Messiah, a biographical film about the life and death of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter, there's a scene in which Hampton (played by Daniel Kaluuya) explains that his activism was sparked by the death of Emmett Till: Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, was brutally beaten and lynched in Mississippi in 1955; Hampton's mother used to babysit the boy while the Till family was living in Chicago. CNN writes: The film shines brightest in these most intimate moments, such as a heartbreaking scene where Hampton and his girlfriend, Deborah Johnson (now Akua Njeri), who was almost nine months pregnant, discuss the joy and trauma of bringing a Black baby into a world scarred by racial violence. Hampton recalls his mother occasionally babysitting Emmett Till, the Black 14-year-old from Chicago whose 1955 lynching, made him the civil rights era's most well-known teen-age martyr. This salient connection between Till and Hampton resurfaced in April 2021 after it was reported that the girlfriend of George Floyd, a Black man who died after an officer knelt on his neck for more than 9 minutes, was once a teacher for Daunte Wright, a Black man who was shot and killed by a police officer in Minnesota. Around this time, The Washington Post reported on another calamitous connection, noting that Caron Nazario, a Black U.S. Army 2nd Lieutenant who was pepper-sprayed by police, viewed Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after repeatedly telling a New York police officer that he couldn't breathe due to the officer's use of a prohibited chokehold, as an uncle. While it may seem at first glance to some that the filmmakers of Judas and the Black Messiah used some poetic license to draw a connection between Till and Hampton, the two families were neighbors in Chicago, and Hampton's mother truly looked after Till. The Chicago Sun Times writes: The Smithsonian added: Craig S. McPherson, a history professor at Georgia State University, wrote about Till and Hampton in his thesis. McPherson notes that in addition to Till and Hampton's growing up in the same neighborhood, and in addition to Hampton's mother babysitting for Till, the two families shared another tragic connection: They were mourned at the same funeral home. Till was murdered in the summer of 1955 during a family vacation to Mississippi to visit relatives. During a stop at a small grocery store, Till, spoke to a white woman. While the details of this interaction are unclear (Till either talked, whistled, or flirted with this woman), what is clear is that several nights after this encounter, Till was abducted by the woman's husband and half-brother, beaten, mutilated, shot in the head, then dumped in a river. After Till's body was discovered, his mother brought him back home and held an open-casket funeral at the A. A. Rayner Funeral Home in Chicago. Mamie Till told the funeral director: Let the people see what I’ve seen. You can see photos of what she wanted the world to see here. An all-white jury acquitted both men of Till's murder. Fourteen years after Till was buried, thousands of people came to A. A. Rayner Funeral Home to mourn the death of Hampton. On Dec. 4, 1969, Hampton was shot and killed during a raid by a tactical unit working with the Chicago Police Department and the FBI. McPherson writes: While police initially claimed that Hampton was killed during a shootout, it is largely believed today that Hampton was assassinated. An article published by the Chicago History Museum's Digital Chicago project reads: (en)
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