The lynching of Emmett Till, a 14 year old Chicago boy on holiday with Mississippi relatives in August 1955 became a pivotal event that triggered the civil rights movement. At his funeral, his mother left the casket open allowing the tens of thousands of mourners to see his mutilated body. Rosa Parks said her refusal to give up a seat on a bus in Alabama to a white passenger in December 1955, a pivotal moment in the civil rights struggle, was a result of his death. She said: “I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.”
Carolyn Bryant who has just died, a white woman, said Emmett had grabbed her round the waist at the store, which in the Deep South was unthinkable in those days. Her husband and his half brother were charged with the murder but found not guilty by an all-white jury. She was not called as a witness and years later divorced her husband on the grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment and habitual drunkenness”.
She never recanted her accusation though the suspicion was she embellished her story. The federal justice department, which described the murder as “one of the most infamous acts of racial violence in our country’s history”, re-opened an investigation in 2004 but no new charges emerged.
Emmett Till was born 25 July 1941 8.20pm Chicago, Illinois, and was a Sun Pluto conjunction in Leo beside Chiron, the wounded healer; with sacrificial Neptune in Virgo conjunct North Node (the spirit of the age) trine Saturn Uranus in Taurus. Not a fate to be wished on anyone especially a young boy, but he was a catalyst for much that followed. Tr Uranus was then at zero degrees Leo – and oddly enough tr Jupiter was exactly conjunct his Solar Arc Sun and his Solar Arc Uranus was conjunct his Jupiter, both of which might in other circumstances be seen as positive happenings. The transiting North Node was hovering around his SA Midheaven pulling his life’s direction into the zeitgeist.
Carolyn Bryant, 23 July 1934, Indianola Mississippi, was a Sun Pluto conjunction like Emmett with her birthday two days after his. She had a Sun Leo square Uranus which was catching the exact tr Uranus conjunction to her Sun at the time of the lynching. Tr Pluto was also opposition her Saturn making for a heavy, discouraging time with her SA Mars just off the scary, trapped conjunction to her Pluto. Her Sun Pluto conjunction would make her prone to attract controlling, bullying men and she went through three husbands before retreating into a life of seclusion.
Her Uranus was square Emmett’s Sun Pluto so she would be a disruptive element in his life (to put it mildly). The relationship chart between them is not informative except that the composite Saturn was conjunct Emmett’s Mars in Aries and the composite Mars was conjunct his Saturn – Mars Saturn being the signature for assassination in traditional astrology.
Indescribably appalling.
Last year President Biden signed into law the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, making lynching a federal hate crime.