Don't Let Us Look Away

Something has to change.

Emmett Till’s mother was courageous. She wanted the world of 1955 to see what it had done to her son. So she insisted that his casket be left open. And the world changed a little. 

John Lewis marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 and met a night stick in the hands of a cop. And the world changed a little more.

Civil rights activists met fire hoses and snarling dogs. And world changed even more.

The world can change when it is confronted with its own evil and can see its evil for what it is. Jet Magazine and the Chicago Defender published the photos of the mutilated body of 14 year old Till.

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Charles Moore photographed children sprayed by fire hoses, black men bitten by German Shepherds, and John Lewis’s skull cracked open. Most of those Moore photos were published in the widest read publication of the time, Life Magazine. The pictures, and other news coverage, helped change the minds of people. The world saw and changed.

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The same thing happened in the Vietnam era. Nobody really cared about a small country in Southeast Asia. Nobody really cared even when the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was passed and then President Lyndon Johnson eventually sent in the Marines and started bombing the hell out of the place. People protested the American involvement, but met opposition and derision from the supposedly patriotic “America right or wrong” crowd. 

Then the photos came.  A naked girl running after having her clothes burned off her by the napalm U.S. bombers dropped. A Saigon officer shooting a VietCong in the head with a pistol. Pictures of bloody American soldiers, pictures of flagged draped coffins, and constant network news coverage of the war and the daily body counts.

America couldn’t change to the other channel or stream something else. Minds began to change against the war. They changed even more when the pictures of Kent State came to the headlines. Now it wasn’t just some Southeast Asians getting killed. Now it was Americans being killed. In America, By Americans. By American forces that were supposed to be fighting for freedom. 

The tide of public opinion turned to the side of protest. The world saw and changed.

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And now we are faced with more evil, the evil of guns and gun violence. Yes, you read that right. The evil of guns. Guns, contrary to the claims of the lovers of the 2nd amendment, have always been meant to kill and to kill more effectively than the enemy. Yes, they are useful tools in hunting whether for sport or actual food, but they are meant to kill. Their purpose is to kill other human beings. 

The Second Amendment is not an unlimited right. Even one of the patron saints of the gun loving Republican Party, Anthony Scalia, said as much in a Supreme Court decision. Yet, just like the public being blind to the problem in Vietnam and the inequality in the country, a large portion remains blind to the problem with guns and gun violence. 

The truth of Emmett Till’s lynching was apparent in his open casket. The truth of inequality was apparent in John Lewis’s cracked skull. The truth of the immorality of war was apparent in the burned skin of a small girl. The world saw the images and changed.

We are the only country where this gun slaughter happens with regularity. Columbine, Sandy Hook, Las Vegas, the Pulse nightclub in Miami, a supermarket in Buffalo, a church in Charleston. 

Maybe the world needs to understand, if not actually see, the real damage these beloved guns cause. Not just a body count and wringing of hands and images of cops standing around police tape barriers. Maybe the world needs to understand a body so damaged that parents have to give DNA samples to identify the bodies. The undertakers had to call in reconstruction experts to make the children somewhat recognizable to their parents. In many cases it wasn’t possible. The only way the parents could tell it was their child was by the shoes they were wearing that day.  

Maybe those images would make it apparent that guns are indeed the problem. The states with more guns per capita have more gun deaths and higher gun deaths rates. Maybe that statistic of body count should be blasted hourly of every television channel. Maybe police carrying body bags instead of standing around would be a more effective image to drive home the point.

Maybe a parent with the courage of Emmett Till’s mother to have an open casket and stations courageous enough to broadcast it and websites bold enough to post photos would move the recalcitrant public to change. 

Nobody is saying that all guns needed to be taken away. They and the violence they cause, however,  can and must be curtailed. Human courage and responsible reporting changed the world before. Maybe it can again.