"Thar He"

50 years ago this summer the first little piece of concrete was removed from the big dam known as segregation. There had been an undercurrent for YEARS, but one murder in Mississippi in the summer of 1955 was like the little pick-axe letting a drip or two of water seep thru that finally was the beginning of the end.......at least to institutional segregation. Those few drips weakened the foundation, and it was only a matter of time that the momentum of Rosa Parks's efforts to take a bull dozer to the dam, and then Martin Luther King brought the dynamite, that caused the dam to fall with the signing of the Civil Rights documents by LBJ. But let's go back to the summer of 55.

Have you heard of Emmett Till? A PBS documentary perked my interest earlier this week. Emmett Till was a 14 year old African American who lived in Chicago and wanted to spend the summer with relatives in Mississippi. He went to live with an uncle who was in in his mid 60's and evidently had been a preacher along with his responsibilites of being a field hand. Reverand Moses Wright was his name. For me, he is the hero of this story. Locally he was known as just Mose. Emmett probably was a typical 14 year old boy of ANY race, self-assured and cocky. He was dared to go into a white owned store (there weren't any other options) and flirt with the white woman behind the counter. That was a MAJOR social taboo in 1955 Mississippi. Yeah, major enough for it to cost him his life. You can go to any search engine and type in "Emmett Till" and read the gory details. I will spare you them here on my blog. It isn't for the weak stomach or faint of heart. The bottom line is the husband of the white woman and his half-brother beat Emmett to death and also shot him in the head. For what? Stepping outside the box......going over the line of what was acceptable. It cost him his life.

When you read about the trial, it sounds like the script to something out of Hollywood. It will for sure take you back to the trial scene from "To Kill a Mockingbird". I wouldn't be surprised if the novel by Harper Lee (one of the greatest literary NAMES of all time) written in 1959 was not somewhat influenced or based on the real life incident involving Emmett Till. That may be a "DUH" for everybody else, so forgive my ignorance. The two white men were on trial with a jury of all white males. The attorney for the two men told the jury that they must remember that Mississippi "was the land of the free and home of the brave", and that if they convicted these two men, their ancestors would "turn over in their graves".
Because Emmett was living with Mose that summer, Mose had opened the door to the two killers when they came to get Emmett. Several others had witnessed Emmett being taken, and also heard screams coming from a local barn. But only Mose and one other African American man would testify against these two white men. Here is an account of this part of the trial:

District Attorney Chatam asked if he could point out the man with the gun in the courtroom.



Moses Wright in court points to Milam and Bryant


"Yes, sir!" Wright said without hesitation. He stood up slowly and with an act of courage and defiance that would reverberate across the state of Mississippi and signal the beginning of the end of white supremacy in the South, an old, black sharecropper pointed a gnarled finger at white J.W. Milam and announced in a loud, clear voice, "Thar he!"


Thar he. Mose said later that he would NEVER forget the hundreds of white people in that court room looking at him with hate written all over their faces. He said, "It was the first time in my life that I had the courage to accuse a white man of a crime," he told the press, "I wasn't exactly brave and I wasn't scared. I just wanted to see justice done." As you might guess, anything but justice came from this trial. The two men were acquitted. Scott free. Several months later because they could not be tried again, they sold their story to "Look" magazine for $4,000 and told in detail the whole tragic story.......admitting to being murderers.

100 days after the verdict, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back seat of the bus. She had read about Emmett Till, and like Mose she just wanted to see justice done.
Because of Rosa, MLK got involved in the Montgomery boycott. The rest is history.

The application I want to make may not be the one you are expecting. I could talk about how far we still have to go with the concept of race relations, or I could continue the theme of making "safe" choices. Both would be worthy discussions. But I keep coming back to Mose saying "thar he". I want to encourage us to do the same thing, to have that same kind of courage in the face of tremendous pressure against us, and point to Satan and say "thar he". When you want to settle for a luke-warm marriage where you are only surviving......thar he. When your fellowship wants to continue down a path of arrogant pride filled sectarianism......thar he. When your job is more important than anything else..........thar he. When you continue to make materialism your idol of worship........thar he. When you stand by in silence when innocent babies are being aborted........thar he. When your prayer life is as pathetic as mine.......thar he. When he wants to convince us that other believers are our enemy instead of him, the evil one....thar he. When love takes a back seat to ANYTHING else......thar he. And we could go on and on, huh?

I love Mose Wright. I look forward to someone pointing him out to me on the other side and saying those two words he made famous......."thar he". I plan on thanking him, and giving him a heart-felt hug. I hope it will be a group hug with you.