One More Question XXII: This Post is Woke
Ahhh, but ain't that America? Home of the free. Little pink houses for you and me.
Children have a tendency to annoy me. Not my own, mind you. Mine are perfect angels. And not yours either; they’re fine. It’s other children, like the ones that stand so close to you in the line at an airport Starbucks that the tired Latina running the register attempts to add her Frappuccino to your order or the urchin that run around a museum as their chaperones threaten everything from timeouts to canceling recess for the remainder of the year.
That museum was the Chicago History Museum, a jewel in a city with an tremendous museum culture1. At the foot of Lincoln Park, it’s a densely-packed tribute to the relatively short history of the city without every turning a blind-eye to its darker periods — Haymarket affair, 1919 race riots, the systemic racism that inspired the freedom movement, 1968 riots.
Children will be children and I was certainly no angel on school field trips. Kids ripped through the exhibits with all the noise and speed of the average tornado, with the exception of the Crossroads room on the second floor with the sign out front that read:
Injustice: The Trial for the Murder of Emmett Till
No, it was this room where every child slowed down and hushed, like they knew the story and were paying their respects.
I’d heard the story of Emmett Till — the young boy from Chicago who was lynched while visiting family in Mississippi for whistling at a white woman — a few times from my wife, a high school history teacher, and always filed it as an ugly milestone in our nation’s racist history.
Wright Thompson’s 2024 book The Barn upended my perspective, as it dug into the conspiracy to hide the murder and the link between Chicago and rural Mississippi, and reflected on the racial reckoning that began with Barack Obama’s election and continues through today’s attacks on DEI2. Thompson is a voracious researcher and reporter, diving into haystacks in search of splinters from a needle to frame his narrative.
Full of photos, including the rather jarring image of Till in his open casket — his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted saying, “Let the world see what I've seen” — the short exhibit took visitors through the story, the preponderance of evidence against the defendants and their unsurprising acquittal, and the cascading years of that lay beyond Till’s burial and the sham trial.
This story of southern injustice burns deeply in Chicago to this day. Till is buried in Alsip, about 25 miles south-southwest of the city. Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ, which held a three-day funeral for him, stands on the South Side. In Bedford is a statue commemorating Mamie Till-Mobley and the last home they lived in together.
It was in the mind of the faceless school-group chaperone who I overheard explain to a group of middle schoolers that her family’s church — Roberts Temple COGIC — was the site of the funeral and that she would answer all of their questions when they finished walking through.
And it was on the face of every child that walked through the exhibit, soberly exiting the room, before returning to their previously-scheduled sprint to the next room.
It was engrained in us that America’s original sin was slavery, though our nation’s disregard for the indigenous people of this continent is right up there. Our unabsolved sin is perpetuating the culture that allowed Emmett Till’s killers to walk free and his accuser to die unpunished by the law and today allows Kilmar Abrego Garcia to be deported because he had tattoos.
Things I’ve Consumed Recently…
Book I’m Reading: The Unknowns: The Untold Story of America's Unknown Soldier and WWI's Most Decorated Heroes Who Brought Him Home by Patrick K. O’Donnell.
Non-Political Thing(s) I’ve Read Recently Worth Sharing:
- via ): Compare the public appetite for Britney Spears and Victoria Beckham stories, and residual hate they received, with…
How involved is Bill Belichick’s girlfriend at UNC? New emails show a glimpse inside her role? (The Athletic): …this story about the 24-year-old girlfriend of a football coach who is acting as his brand ambassador.
Political Thing(s) I’ve Read Recently Worth Sharing:
- ): One of Gen X’s best writers on the national moment and Kilmar Abrego Garcia.
- ) and 144. The Supreme Court's Late-Night Alien Enemy Act Intervention (): Dissecting the Trump Administration’s deportation of criminals(?) and suspected tension within the Supreme Court.
Coming This Friday
After-death communication and we’re not talking about mediums or seances.
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The Field Museum was cool. We didn’t have time for the Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Medieval Torture, Swedish American Museum, International Museum of Surgical Science, Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago Museum of Illusions, Peggy Notebart Nature Museum, DuSable Black History Museum, etc.
I’m of the opinion that, when invested in and operated strategically, DEI programs are incredibly beneficial to all employees and students of an enterprise. Many, however, just check a box which does no one any good.
Our original sin. That line is the truth. Raised a Catholic, I fear we need a confession, a South African Truth and Reconciliation national confession.