Mamie till-mobley mother of emmett till

Mamie Till-Mobley never wanted her son to go to Money, Mississippi.

In fact, she said no, many times over.

Mamie till-mobley mother of emmett till biography

It was the summer of 1955, and Emmett—she called him Bobo—had just turned 14. His cousins would soon be heading south to spend a week with their uncle. He wanted to go, too.

Eventually, Mamie relented, but her permission came with caveats.

Mississippi had certain unspoken rules, she told him, rules that didn’t exist in Chicago, where he’d grown up.

Mamie till-mobley mother of emmett till

He would need to follow them at all times. For instance: He shouldn’t speak to white people unless spoken to. If a white woman was walking toward him, he should lower his head and never look her in the eye.

“Everything Emmett had come to believe all his life had to be unlearned as he prepared for the trip,” Mamie later wrote in her autobiography, Death of Innocence: The Story of the Hate Crime That Changed Americ