I have never really known fear as a young child living in a Black community in the first years of my life. Once we moved to Englewood, two things happened that gave me nightmares. It was like an inauguration.
The first was the lynching of Emmett Till—when we saw those pictures of his mutilated body in Jet in September 1955. Our parents reacted to it, but they didn’t realize their children looked at those photos, too. The worst part was, I knew him. I used to go to the same barbershop as Emmett Till in Chicago. The barbershop was owned by Mr. Parker, the father of my friend Donald. There were always a lot of kids coming and going in that place. But I remember seeing Emmett Till there. His father would bring him in. My own parents didn’t know about this, because it wouldn’t have occurred to them that I would be in the barbershop with this kid. But we knew him, and then we saw those photos. How can you think that I could grow up and handle that on my own? What was I supposed to do with that? Where was I supposed to tuck that away?
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