Tony Adler, my man, a million thanks to you for straightening out me and thousands of other Reader readers on the truth about Emmett Till’s murder in your recent review of the Pegasus Players’ The State of Mississippi…and the Face of Emmett Till [“A Mother of a Problem,” September 19]. Yep, as you state so well: “The simple fact that Mobley [Emmett Till’s mother] is telling her own story here ought to put us on our guard, however scrupulous she may actually have been….We have to be suspicious of a telling rendered by someone who lived so long and intimately–and traumatically–with the material…. Consciously or not, Mobley used The State of Mississippi…and the Face of Emmett Till to put her spin on events and settle accounts.”
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Dude, stop being so politely restrained. Just come right out and call Mobley a lyin’ ol’ bitch. It is her own fault, after all, that Emmett got mutilated down south, right? Why didn’t she teach dat boy how to respeck white folk and stay in his place? What da hell was his li’l project ass doin’ in Mississippi anyway? And if he was gonna be down there, why wasn’t he doin’ somethin’ productive, like shinin’ shoes or cleanin’ outhouses? Tony, my ace boon coon, I fully agree with you that it is patently absurd for Mobley and [David] Barr to even suggest that Emmett was doing anything but lusting after that white gal who accused him of whistling at her. Everyone knows that black males hunger for white female flesh like a pack of starving wolves–hell, I’m gettin’ hot fo’ a white gal right now jes’ thinkin’ ’bout it.
Kenny Calvin
