The was no justice for Breonna Taylor and no NFL week 3 preview
65 years ago this week, the trial of Roy Bryant and his half-brother JW Milam for the kidnap, torture, and murder of 14-year old Emmett Till came to an end, with the jury sent for deliberations. An hour later, the all-male, all-white jury allowed the pair to walk free.
The half-brothers had been on trial for brutally murdering Till after Carolyn Bryant, wife of Roy, accused him of whistling at her in a store and grabbing her by the waist. In a 2017 book, Bryant told Timothy Tyson ‘that part’s not true’ about the allegations he assaulted her.
To make matters worse for the Till family, four months after the trial—and confident that they could not be prosecuted twice for the same crime under the double jeopardy rule—Milam and Bryant admitted to abducting, beating, and murdering Till in Look Magazine. An admission they received $4,000 for.
A lifetime later, and despite this admission, Till’s family have yet to see a single minute of time served by anyone or receive a single penny of compensation for the murder of Emmett.
It was hard not to think of Till this week as, more than six months after Taylor was shot to death by Louisville police officers, a grand jury decided to indict only one of the three officers involved on ‘first-degree wanton endangerment' charges. The charge applies to the risk put on Taylor’s neighbours, but does not aim to hold the officer responsible for her death.
Just think about that for a second. The only charge in this case relates to the bullets that did not kill Breonna Taylor.
And yet, still, there are those who wonder why Black athletes and their allies kneel when 65 years later it’s easier to get justice as a window or a wall than it is to get it as a person of colour.
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