Breeds of America

I just read a beautiful essay by William Melvin Kelley called “Breeds of America” (It was republished in The Best American Essays 2013). It’s a moving account of a young African-American discovering race and racism growing up in the Bronx in the fifties. Reading it in late 2014 in Saint Louis, Missouri is a poignant experience.

Then in summer 1955 came the murder of Emmett Till. Damn.

His courageous mother made us look at his battered, bloated face. See what you’ve done to my boy. I saw myself in Emmet Till, an outgoing and adventurous fourteen-year-old from Chicago who considered racism and segregation a crazy joke, who was accustomed to talking boldly to anybody, even to some policemen, not realizing the COLORED and WHITE signs really meant something, complimenting a pretty girl I did not know, like in Chicago and New York. Hey baby, Emmett Till said to Miss Carolyn. Hey baby.

The murder of light-skinned Emmett Till made me feel like a real Negro. Your skin shade, your manners, your voice didn’t really matter. Say the wrong thing to the wrong Euro and you’d end up brutalized, beaten, hanged, shot, drowned, killed, dead. Underneath it all, Euros hated us and thought nothing of killing us.

I guess we can be thankful we don’t have those COLORED and WHITE signs anymore. We just have everything they once stood for.

• The Best American Essays 2013*