Airickca Gordon-Taylor, founding director of the Mamie Till Mobley Memorial Foundation, penned an open letter to Hip Hop superstar Lil’ Wayne.
The Till family is devastated by the hurtful lyrics of Lil’ Wayne’s verse in Future’s song “Karate Chop.”
Lil’ Wayne, who is featured on the track, raps, “Beat that pu**y up like Emmett Till.” Lil’ Wayne can be heard laughing after uttering the line.
Taylor wrote Till was not a “sacrificial lamb” for the Civil Rights Movement, but their beloved “BoBo.”
Last week, Till’s close cousin Simeon Wright discussed his thoughts on Wayne’s verse with The Associated Press.
Wright shared a bed with Till the night he was murdered. He heard the song for the first time last Wednesday, according to the AP.
“And he said the Ku Klux Klan would be very proud of Lil Wayne,” Gordon-Taylor said, according to the AP. “And as tough a man as he is, I could see the hurt and the anger in his eyes. It just demonstrates to our family just how lost are our youth.”
Emmett Louis Till was a 14-year-old African American Chicago teen murdered in Mississippi in 1955 after allegedly whistling at a white woman. The teen was in the Mississippi Delta region visiting family members.
The event took place after Till allegedly showed friends a photograph of himself in an integrated school. Till said he had a white girlfriend to the young boys’ disbelief. Till was dared by some of the local boys to talk to a white woman who was running a store.
A few days later after the incident, the woman’s husband Roy Bryant and half brother J.W. Milam arrived at the teen’s great-uncle’s house and took him to a barn, tortured him and gouged out one of his eyes. They shot the Chicago boy in the head, tied a cotton gin fan around his neck with barbwire and threw his body in the Tallahatchie River. His body was recovered three days later.
Till’s mother Mamie Till held an open casket funeral for the world to see the brutal nature of her son’s murder. Bryant and Milam were brought to trial for Till’s death and later acquitted. A few months later, the two boldly admitted to killing the teen in a magazine interview. Bryant and Milam were protected by double jeopardy, which prevents a defendant from being charged with the same crime after being acquitted.
View the open letter below.
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