For Black History Month, Dieruff students learn about Emmett Till, civil rights movement

Marcus Baez, a senior at Dieruff High School, listens to Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Dieruff High School junior Frayni S. Martinez asks a question of Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

A Dieruff High School student answers questions on a worksheet during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” addresses students Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Jeniris Almodovar, a senior at Dieruff High School, listens to Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Dieruff High School students listen to Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Robert Robinson, left, chief of culture, equity and advancement for the Allentown School District, has a conversation with Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow” on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Shalanda Riddick, a junior at Dieruff High School, listens to Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Janyraliz Nieve, a junior at Dieruff High School, listens to Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at the Allentown school. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

Robert Robinson, chief of culture, equity and advancement for the Allentown School District, talks to students about his family’s history as share croppers in Mississippi during a presentation Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. Robert Mayer, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow,” visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)

When Robert Mayer began to investigate the civil rights movement, he wanted his research to focus on young people.

Mayer, a retired Moravian University professor, said Mississippi in the 1950s and ‘60s was the prime place to start. His efforts detailing this time period and the Black youth who fought against segregation resulted in the book “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow.”

“What I’m finding out is, it’s still true today, including here in the Valley, [that] young people are very involved in what’s going on,” Mayer said, noting he saw many young people attend Black Lives Matter protests in Bethlehem in recent years.

Mayer spoke to a group of students Wednesday at Dieruff High School about his book for Black History Month. Throughout his presentation, Mayer spoke about the story of Till and the young activists galvanized by Till’s story to fight against racism in the years following his brutal murder.

History teachers talked to students about Till’s story in preparation for Mayer’s visit, and social studies department head Dan Jurasits said students connected to Till’s story because of his age. He was only 14 years old when he was killed.

“I think for them it really, very much personalizes a lot of the stuff that they see in history,” Jurasits said.

The story of Till’s murder starts in 1955, when the teen was visiting family in the Mississippi Delta region.

He entered a store owned by Carolyn Bryant Donham and her husband. What happened next is unclear, but Bryant Donham said under oath at the time that Till used vulgar language, made sexual comments, and grabbed her hand and waist.

Decades later in 2017, Bryant Donham, a white woman, told a historian this wasn’t true, but she couldn’t remember what actually happened. Witnesses at the time claimed Till wolf-whistled at her.

Whatever the case may be, days after Bryant Donham told her husband about the encounter in August 1955, Till was kidnapped, beaten, tortured and shot in the head. His body was tied with barbed wire to a cotton gin fan and thrown in a river.

His mother had an open casket at Till’s funeral as a way to force the country to reckon with its racism. A photo of Till’s battered face was published in Jet magazine and famously catalyzed a generation of Black activists, including many teens, to fight against racism.

“Most of us are people of color, and if we were living in that time period, we would be affected by segregation and racial motivations of everyone,” Marcos Baez, a senior Dieruff student, said after the presentation. “It’s hurtful that they did that to a 14-year-old boy. They shouldn’t have done that.”

Baez said the decision Till’s mother made to have an open casket was pivotal in showing the country what happened.

Frayni Segura Martinez, a junior, said she learned about Till’s story when she was younger, but she plans to read Mayer’s book — which is in the school library — to learn more about the civil rights movement.

“I was mostly enraged by how you could do that to a child,” Segura Martinez said. “I get that it was back in the day, it wasn’t like it is now, but he was still a child.”

Mayer also spoke to students about the Mississippi teen activists who fought segregation in the years following Till’s death, including Brenda Travis, who protested against a segregated bus station.

Travis spent a month in jail for her efforts and found out she was expelled from high school when she tried to return, prompting a school walkout of more than 100 teens.

Segura Martinez said she was inspired by Travis and the other teen activists Mayer spoke about.

She said peaceful protest is important, and she told her classmates about a protest she attended in 2020 outside of a New York City police station. The protest was held in response to George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white Minneapolis police officer who knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes. Floyd was a Black man.

“I’ve always been very passionate about change and what’s wrong with the world,” Segura Martinez said. She added that it was impactful seeing so many young people like her at the protest “knowing their worth.”

Ashley Altamirano, a junior, said it’s important to combat racism and discrimination today, and she wants to be a police officer one day to be a good example.

“I want to show that this new generation of police officers can be better than the last,” she said.

Robert Robinson, Allentown School District’s chief of culture, equity and advancement, also spoke to students about his family’s history in the Mississippi Delta region as share croppers.

Share cropping was a system in which poor people could farm land that was owned by another person by paying for the land with a portion of the crop yield. Many Black people turned to share cropping out of necessity after the Civil War and the end of slavery.

“The share cropper system was a revolving system to keep people in poverty, because you bought your materials, you rented the land, you earned enough money just to live,” he said.

Robinson said his grandfather and father were share croppers. His father inherited debt when Robinson’s grandfather died, he said, and Robinson’s father ran away to escape the share cropper system.

“My father got to a point one day that he decided that he wanted a better life, so he just escaped almost like a slave for a better life with no education and nothing,” Robinson said.

Robinson told students it’s important to realize the legacy of slavery is not so distant.

He also told them about how Mississippi only recently retired its state flag in 2020. The former Mississippi flag design included the Confederate battle flag of the Civil War, an emblem of the Southern fighters in favor of maintaining slavery.

“I think the most important thing about Black History Month is the realization that there’s so many people whose names are not as known,” Robinson added.

While many know Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X, there are others, like Robinson’s father, who were protesting right behind them, he said, including many young people.

“It’s really good for us to reflect on those sacrifices, and it’s good for these young people to know that a lot of those people who were protesting and marching were kids their age and younger,” Robinson said. “So young people can really have the power to make America even better.”

Robert Mayer, left, author of “In the Name of Emmett Till: How the Children of the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Showed Us Tomorrow," has a conversation with Robert Robinson, chief of culture, equity and advancement for the Allentown School District, on Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2023, at Dieruff High School in Allentown. Mayer visited Dieruff as part of Black History Month for a presentation and conversation with students on youth in the civil rights movement and what that means today. (Rick Kintzel/The Morning Call)