What Else Could We Do Analysis
What Else Could We Do?: Turning Tragedy into Triumph
"Well, what else could we do?” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till) J. W. Milam asked, though it was a rhetorical question at best, for he already knew the answer. “I like niggers -- in their place…But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice... And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he 's tired o ' livin '. I 'm likely to kill him" (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). In an interview, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi”, published in Look magazine on January 24, 1956, J.W. Milam openly confessed to the murder of young Emmett Till, a murder for which he and his half brother, Roy Bryant, had been acquitted of just four months earlier. As if the brutal beating and killing of Till weren’t enough, to have the killers confess openly on a national platform forced African Americans to …show more content…
Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?” The acquittal of these men proved two things to the black community of this time: one, the value, or lack thereof, of a black life in America, especially in the South, and two, though African Americans had made leaps and bounds as far as freedom and gaining a sense of equality in America, they still had a long way to go. The acquittal of the two men known to have kidnapped Till in the middle of the night led to public outrage. “The Daily Worker bemoaned that ‘Good people everywhere-in America and throughout the world-feel a deep sense of horror over the outcome of the murder trial in Mississippi,’ and the Chicago Defender promised its readers that ‘this miscarriage of justice must not be left unavenged’” (Pollack and Metress 6). This is something that Emanuel’s poem does, in fact, allude to, and something that actually became a part of Till’s
"Well, what else could we do?” (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till) J. W. Milam asked, though it was a rhetorical question at best, for he already knew the answer. “I like niggers -- in their place…But I just decided it was time a few people got put on notice... And when a nigger gets close to mentioning sex with a white woman, he 's tired o ' livin '. I 'm likely to kill him" (American Experience: The Murder of Emmett Till). In an interview, “The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi”, published in Look magazine on January 24, 1956, J.W. Milam openly confessed to the murder of young Emmett Till, a murder for which he and his half brother, Roy Bryant, had been acquitted of just four months earlier. As if the brutal beating and killing of Till weren’t enough, to have the killers confess openly on a national platform forced African Americans to …show more content…
Much like the confessed murderers, African Americans surely wondered “What else could we do?” The acquittal of these men proved two things to the black community of this time: one, the value, or lack thereof, of a black life in America, especially in the South, and two, though African Americans had made leaps and bounds as far as freedom and gaining a sense of equality in America, they still had a long way to go. The acquittal of the two men known to have kidnapped Till in the middle of the night led to public outrage. “The Daily Worker bemoaned that ‘Good people everywhere-in America and throughout the world-feel a deep sense of horror over the outcome of the murder trial in Mississippi,’ and the Chicago Defender promised its readers that ‘this miscarriage of justice must not be left unavenged’” (Pollack and Metress 6). This is something that Emanuel’s poem does, in fact, allude to, and something that actually became a part of Till’s