The Hate U Give

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I wanted to talk a little bit about Emmet Till today in my blog post. Emmet Till was used in The Hate U Give frequently as a symbol of The Civil Rights Movement and even a symbol for Khalil. Most of you probably have heard about Emmet Till but I would guess that many of you don't. Some of us are unaware about him and other black victims because this is a conversation which is not held enough. People do not want to talk about Emmet Till or police brutality because it make us uncomfortable. It says something that these conversations make us uncomfortable. I want us to be uncomfortable. I want us to be uncomfortable about a society that often and systematically projects hate. We can not make changes while we are comfortable.

Emmet Till was a fourteen year old African American boy that grew up in Detroit, Michigan and was born in Chicago in 1941. After an interaction with a woman named Carolyn Bryant the boy was taken out of his house by the woman's fiancé and his friend. They lynched him and then shot him. The body was found three days after the incident alongside a river.

The two men were found not guilty of any charges by an all white jury. After statute of limitations and double jeopardy was up there were two confessions. The men confessed to killing Till and Carolyn Bryant confessed to fabricating most of the incident.

These men walked free just as one fifteen did in the book. Things like this still happen in our country. Too many black lives are unlawfully and unjustifiably taken from the world. Maybe having theses conversations can help open the problem up to more and more people and will help us come closer to a solution for this terrible problem.

Comments

  1. Eva YoussefNovember 11, 2019 at 9:07 PM

    Griffin, I am so grateful you opened this conversation up. I didn't know about Emmet Till's story before now and that is very unfortunate. It is not okay that he is just one of many that share the same fate as Khalil and other African Americans do at the hands of racism in this country. It's so important that we do not become silent or we will become complacent. I hope we can all have more conversations like this so we can move towards a change that needs to happen in this country.

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  2. Ally DunlapNovember 12, 2019 at 8:47 AM

    Griffin, this is so well written and you bring up a very good and valid point. These conversations need to be had for there to be a change. If you were to teach this book to your future class, would you give them history lessons on people like Emmet Till while reading or would you do it before or after the novel is read?

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  3. UnknownNovember 12, 2019 at 9:43 AM

    I think that it is important to know stories like these to better understand not only the book but the world around us. Emmet Till's story also came up in my Southern Lit class. Do you think that YA readers will have a better understanding of Black Lives Matter and movements like it after reading The Hate U Give? I personally respected the movement but was always indifferent about BLM thinking that people obviously felt strongly about it but I didn't have a deeper understanding about it until we listened to the TED talk speaker and even more so understand all the encompasses it because of this book and class discussions.

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