“Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your old men will dream dreams, and your young men will see visions.” 

Joel 2:28

Today marks the 57^thanniversary of the March on Washington when Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream Speech.”  I only just made the connection that today marks the 65^thanniversary of Emmett Till’s murder.  

He was only 14 years old and visiting his family in Money, Mississippi.  It is alleged that he whistled at Carolyn Bryant in her grocery store.  She told her husband of the incident and a few days later, Roy Bryant and his half-brother kidnapped Emmett from his uncle’s home. They beat him, mutilated him and strangled him and through his body in the Tallahatchie River.  A few days later some fisherman found Emmett’s body.  Roy Bryant and his brother were put on trial with an all white male jury.  The jury only deliberated for 67 minutes and found the two men innocent.  The jurors said that the deliberation took so long because they had all stopped to drink sodas.  

Emmett’s body was taken back to Chicago and his mother insisted on an open casket.  She said that she wanted the world to see what they had done to her son.  Pictures of Emmett’s beaten and bloated face was shown in prominent Black magazines throughout the nation.  One such person that saw the photo was Rosa Parks.  A few months later she was sitting on a bus and ordered to sit in the back. She refused to move because she said that she was thinking of Emmett Till.  She took a stand by sitting.  It is Emmett Till’s murder that launched the Civil Rights Movement.

Eight years later, on the anniversary of Emmett’s brutal death and unconscionable denial of justice, Dr. King was able to profoundly and powerfully put forth into the world, “I have a dream today!”  My dear friends, I have a dream today, too!  I have a dream that in our nation where division has become the norm and white supremacy is on the rise that we can still yet to be these United States of America.  I have a dream where our country can hold our police accountable, where Jacob Blake’s don’t become paralyzed after a family dispute, where young white vigilante teenagers don’t take it upon themselves to “protect” their community by killing two protestors out of fear and hero-complex exuberance.  Oh I have a dream today…I have a dream where can all just see each other as people and just start living.  I have a dream that ALL Black Lives truly Matter. My friends…I have a dream today.