'Children Shouldn't Have to Live in Fear'

While gathering research for my book, "Who Killed Emmett Till?" I learned of numerous violent incidences in the Mississippi Delta,and I wondered what it would be like to raise children with such horror going on all around.

One evening, while sitting at Walter Scurlock's restaurant in the small town of Drew, my husband and I found ourselves having coffee with Nettie Davis, one of the first black people from Drew who would talk to me about Emmett Till and other murders in the Delta. She introduced us to her friend, a man from her church. Both were long time residents of this former cotton ginning town.

It didn't take long for Davis to get to the essence of why people had been, and continue to be, so affected by Emmett's murder.

"He was just a kid, that's why this murder was so different than all of the rest."

Nettie Davis made her point for a second time during this conversation. It was important to Nettie that I understand Jim Crow rules are rarely written down and vary by community.

Davis and her friend were patient in offering their wisdom on this cool, fall evening forty-nine years later. And their memories brought fresh reality to the Emmett Till story that night.

"You need to understand. There had been other murders. Joe Pullen, George Lee, so many horrible murders. But Emmett was a young boy, just 14, and he didn't know the rules," Davis said. "Emmett's mother said she tried to tell him, but he couldn't have really understood how much different things were in the Delta than they were in Chicago."

How could black parents ever protect their children in those days, I wanted to know, as I thought of my own rambunctious son when I asked the question. Would I have let him go to the movies alone? Walk to the store or post office? Drive a car?

What if your child accidentally said the wrong thing? Made the wrong gesture, or broke any of the unwritten Jim Crow laws? What if your child was simply misunderstood? How would you keep an active child quiet? Or safe? "Well, you didn't take your children out very much," Davis's friend offered.

"You tried to protect them by keeping them away from places where they could get into trouble, or be hurt, or something bad. But you didn't talk a lot about these things, because a child shouldn't have to be scared," Nettie Davis said.

Her friend had remained on the periphery of this conversation, but then pulled his chair closer and began speaking of his own experiences regarding his sister and Emmett Till's lynching.

She was 14 at the time, the same age as young Till, and a student at the Drew Colored School, only a few miles away from where he was taken into the Drew countryside and, most likely, killed.

The town's children knew about the murder, some knew within hours.

The sister of Davis's friend had been so traumatized and angry at the time, " . . . she has never spoken to a white person since," he said.

Maybe it would be good for his sister if she would speak to someone now about her feelings, I suggested.

"Maybe she would talk to you," he offered.

Davis's friend pulled out his cell phone and called his sister in Jackson, trying to set up an interview with me. "Could she talk to me when I go there the following week?" I asked.

After a few back and forth phone calls with her brother, the sister agreed to meet me and talk. But the appointment fell through when she backed out the next morning.

"She's still afraid," he told me.

Of course, Nettie Davis is right. Children shouldn't have to live in fear.