Goodman Theatre Presents the Ballad of Emmett Till

Ifa Bayeza, the creator of The Ballad of Emmett Till, brought her stage play to Goodman Theatre (located at 170 North Dearborn in downtown Chicago) in the 2006 New Stages series for a sold-out reading. The success of that brought on the 2008 release of The Ballad of Emmett Till, which opened on April 26, 2008 and runs until June 1, 2008.

The Ballad of Emmett Till takes on the real-life story of a 14-year-old boy named Emmett "Bobo" Till from Chicago who went to visit relatives over the summer in Mississippi, dodging his mother's suggestion that he visit Detroit with her and her boyfriend instead. At the beginning of the play, audience members are informed that charismatic and talkative Emmett Till had polio that affected his leg, along with a stuttering problem, and the best way to get his words out was to whistle. Unfortunately, his whistling would be his downfall on August 24, 1955, after whistling at a White woman, Caroline Bryant, when leaving Bryant's Grocery & Meat Market for bubblegum and jujubes. His cousins reacted to his whistling with fear, and Emmett Till begged them not to tell his uncle. Emmett Till did not realize what he'd done was so wrong, even after his mother warned him about the differences between Mississippi and Chicago.

Emmett Till's cousins obliged his request for secrecy after much hesitation, but on August 28 when it was still dark outside, Emmett was ordered at gunpoint out of the bed he shared with his cousin, Simeon Wright, by Caroline Bryant's husband, Roy Bryant, and his half brother, J.W. Milam. Emmett Till was tortured and beaten to death (one of his hazel eyes was gone while the other hung on his cheek, majority of his teeth were missing, his nose was smashed in, and there was a bullet-sized hole in his right temple), and Emmett Till was thrown into the Tallahatchie River weighted down by a cotton gin fan. His mother only recognized him by the ring he wore from his father with the initials L.T. on it. Enraged and distraught about how someone could treat her son this way, she ordered his coffin to be open so people could see what they did to her child. Thousands of people showed up to Roberts Temple Church of God (Chicago) to view the body. In The Ballad of Emmett Till, the killers of Emmett Till weren't just Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, but two Black men were also forced into helping with the slaying or Emmett Till.

The defense attorney's strongest argument was that it was so dark outside that Emmett Till's uncle, Mose Wright, couldn't be sure that he saw the two men who came into his house and took Emmett Till with only a flashlight and guns in their hands. Bryant and Milam were given a Not Guilty verdict from an all-White jury, who took approximately 67 minutes to deliberate, treated the case like a joke, and even went to get soft drinks to make it look like they were pondering the case. However, Bryant and Milam later were interviewed by Look magazine and confirmed that they were the killers. But as of today, even with the FBI involved, no one has been imprisoned for the death of Emmett Till.

The Ballad of Emmett Till was the first time that I was aware that there could've been two Black men involved in the killing of Emmett Till, so I learned something new. The acting of both Cliff Chamberlain (Roy Bryant) and Chris Sullivan (J.W. Milam) caught my attention immediately. They played their roles to the tea, and every single time one of the two hurled out the word nigger, for some odd reason, I didn't cringe. For the characters that they played, it almost sounded normal for them to say it, and their anger was so real that I had to admire their acting skills. Because this play was about such a dark topic, I was almost relieved when these two came into the storyline. At the beginning up until Joseph Anthony Byrd (Emmett Till) whistled at Kristina Johnson (Caroline Bryant), the play was a little too happy for me. I wasn't interested in clapping my hands or stomping my feet to the singing parts, laughing at Emmett Till's jokes, or admiring his fashionable spending habits. Although Emmett Till's fixation with girls and the competition over who would win over Ruthie May Crawford between Emmett Till and his cousins would be interesting in another play, I was ready for that part to get a move on. I wanted to get to the root of the story. In the Goodman Theatre's brochure, Bayeza says, "In this piece, I was looking for the musicality and rhythm of language. I think that people are surprised that while the story of Emmett Till is tragic, watching the play is also an uplifting experience."

While I was interested in the educational parts of the play and the intensity of some of the issues, there was an upbeat part of the beginning and end, and a little overacting from the main character, Joseph Anthony Byrd, playing Emmett Till. I believe he stated his lines as written, but some things, especially running around in the courtroom, got to be annoying instead of interesting. There were some spots that didn't need to be in the play, such as a Chicago stepping scene with Emmett Till and his mother, and Byrd wriggling around the stage in pain for several minutes on several occasions when the storyline could've moved along minutes before. It made sense to have these scenes of agony during the killing scenes, but not during other scenes when characters reflected on Emmett Till's death. There was nothing wrong with any of the actors or the play, but because I came specifically to see the murder scenes and the courtroom parts, the rest of the play, for me, was a distraction. However, I am pleased that the story of Emmett Till is not being forgotten.

The diversity in the audience showed that many people (White and Black, young and older, and of various economic backgrounds) are willing to witness the narrative of this story, and the sad reaction when the play ended followed by some people standing up to clap for the actors made it obvious that the play hit its mark. Ironically, right after the play was over, I was singing along to a song on my MP3 player and bumped into a White woman leaving the theater. I gave her my toothy grin, she smiled back, I apologized, and kept on walking. It wasn't until I was halfway down Franklin Street that the connection set in. Had I been in Mississippi during the time Emmett Till was there, simply brushing past someone who was White or not moving out of her way could've gotten me killed. While I'm fortunate enough that the lady who I bumped into didn't think much of it and the White guy who sat next to me on the Metra train coming back home probably didn't consider my race, issues like the Emmett Till story tell me just how much of an impact Civil Rights leaders had for Blacks to receive equality. For that, I must thank them eternally.