I saw this article today about how they're going to exhume Emmett Till's body for an autopsy to confirm the cause of his death. I'm no coroner, but I can tell you how he died: HATE.
Whenever I hear of Emmett Till's story, I think of the case of Vincent Chin, who was violently killed less than a week before his wedding. His murderers, who admitted to beating him to death with a baseball bat, were handed a verdict of a $3,000 fine, $780 in court fees, and three years probation for each of the men.
If you don't know either of these stories, take a few minutes to read the links above.
Posted by jozjozjoz at May 4, 2005 07:13 PMThanks Joz. I hadn't heard of Vincent Chin until now and I was living in Michigan at the time! Anti Asian sentiment was and probably is still very high with those rednecks. If you drove a foreign car (Japanese/German/Italian/etc) you were sure to have your windshield smashed, car keyed or have someone waiting for you to return to your parked car so that they could yell at you. Insane. Sad.
Posted by: orbicon at May 5, 2005 01:04 PMI think hate crimes are so stupid. I just do not comprehend them.
A guy in SE Alaska was murdered last month. They HAD to say he was an Alaska Native, like that makes a difference (I've heard through the grape vine another alaska native did it... does it make it any worse??).
This just makes me ill.
Posted by: shelley at May 5, 2005 11:27 AM