What Shall I Tell White People Who Want to Write About Black Tragedy? Don’t.

Emmett Till and the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre at John Jay College

That is what I will tell you. Don’t write about it. Don’t do it. It’s not your story to tell. What you SHOULD write about is white complacency, white ignorance, and the white guilt around being a bystander and not lifting a finger to change the tide of racialized violence. That is YOUR white story to tell about American racism. The story of how white people who have known since 1619 that the plight of we descendants of kidnapped, trafficked and enslaved Africans was/is inhumane (and dare I say evil), is the story you can and should tell other white people. However, please oh please resist the urge to write your ignorance, complacency, and guilt into the center of Black folks' very real experiences of torture and lynching.

Apparently, on Mar 23, 2022, a new opera titled “Emmett Till, A New American Opera,” conceived by playwright and librettist Clare Coss and composer Mary D. Watkins, will premiere at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre at John Jay College. The production is co-presented by John Jay College, Opera Noire International, The Harlem Chamber Players, and Harlem Arts Alliance.

Let me preface this critique with some important housekeeping items for white people reading this and the Black people that supported this nonsense.

A)     I don’t care how many Black people decided to play along with this foolishness, it does not make this production acceptable and I will happily debate any of the Black persons that engaged with this travesty.

B)     If you are wondering why I feel empowered to criticize this work and the people who helped create it, Google me. I have spent 27 years of my post-college theatre career (in Chicago, which is a major theatre market in the United States. #TheatreBeyondBroadway) writing, directing, and producing Black narratives through a historically accurate lens and only aligning myself and my organization The Stillwell Institute for Contemporary Black Art with arts organizations that focus on cultural specificity and social justice.

Let’s take a moment to look at the premise of this “opera”.

“Based on Coss’ award-winning 2013 play Emmett, Down in My Heart, the opera reimagines the events around the tragic murder of Till, a 14-year-old African-American boy from Chicago who was lynched in Mississippi in 1955.”

The first problem with this work is that Coss is “reimagining” the very real lynching of a Black boy by white men over a lie that a white woman told in the Jim Crow south in 1955.

Ok. Let us continue our examination of this work.

“In the opera, the story is approached through the lens of Roanne Taylor, a young white woman who teaches high school science in Drew, Mississippi. Roanne is against Jim Crow laws, segregation, and the racial inequality that she sees around her but remains silent. She is the opera’s only fictional character and represents what Martin Luther King Jr. called the ultimate tragedy, “the silence of the good people.” Featuring both a Black Chorus and a white Chorus, Emmett Till weaves the horrific murder of Till with Mamie Till-Mobley’s transformation from private citizen to activist, Uncle Mose Wright’s bold decision to break the Delta code and testify at the trial, and Roanne Taylor’s journey toward a sense of responsibility.”

Do you see where I’m going with this or do I have to spell it out for you? How distasteful, disrespectful and disgusting is it to create a white gaze through which to view this Black tragedy? It is just as disgusting as the assertion that the only way white people will understand this racially motivated lynching is to watch a white woman do absolutely nothing in the face of said injustice. Rather than change the circumstances of the environment of racism, the fictional white character gets to sing about it.

We know the fictional white woman did nothing because of the writer’s own narrative on why she wrote the piece. Coss writes,  “Emmett Till was murdered not far upriver from where I was a junior at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge…No one in my largely white world would talk about what happened, a child brutally tortured and lynched—the breakdown of justice. White supremacy and Jim Crow ruled.

Over the years, the pain of Emmett’s murder continued to plague my heart. In 1992, I awoke one morning with a spiritual mandate to write a play about Emmett Till. I approached writing about him through my conviction that this tragedy is shared, in the way the tragic history of this country is shared. White people as perpetrators and witnesses of white supremacy have a stake in this story. I want people to understand that it was not so long ago. Emmett Till is in our lifetime. He is in MY lifetime. I want people to understand the grave parallels between the world over 60 years ago to today’s world, from Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin to Daunte Wright. It is still happening and we must continue to shed light on these stories. I am reminded of Mamie Till-Mobley’s words, ‘The world must see what was done to my son. The world must help me tell the story.’ And so we will.” Playbill Announcement the Opera

It amuses me in an ironic way that the writer quotes Mamie Till’s words but does not think it is important to center Mamie in the narrative. Mamie and her tragedy become the backdrop to a young white girl who does nothing except lament doing nothing…in song.

I am left asking myself, what is the point of this “opera”? Is the point of this “opera” to give guilty white folks that have never lifted a finger for the movement, but feel really bad about racism a soft place to land? I am not sure why we are spending time disrespecting Emmett and Mamie Till’s legacy in this manner. I am not sure why any Black person would attach themselves artistically to this grotesque display of white self-pity. What I am sure of is that this “opera” is not art. Art advances humanity. Art moves us forward. Art is the time capsule that lets future generations know what has happened and how the past correlates to the present.

Art understands history and uses it to speak to our future selves. This “opera” does none of that. It is not art.  It does not advance racial healing. It does not explore and expose injustice. It is not historically accurate, which makes it a lie.  It only furthers the narrative that white folks’ complacency is a really good excuse to let racism prevail even though they know that Black folks will be lynched and assassinated. But hey, as long as good white folks feel bad about the racism, then good white folks have done their part.

It is also not lost on me that the announcement about this “opera” came out the same day that the Emmett Till Antilynching Act was signed into law. Furthering the insult and injury of this storytelling. It is clear that work was created for the sole purpose to profit from Black social justice movements because appearing “woke” is en vogue. However, Predominantly White Institutions (PWI’s) don’t want to be “woke” enough to produce any of the Black playwrights that have written about this moment in time with historical accuracy and cultural competency. Let’s not be that “woke”, as that level of “wokeness” might offend the other white people that have sat on their hands and done nothing except misquote Dr. King in January. Let us good PWIs produce a fictionalized “opera” written by a white woman about a Black national tragedy based on a fictionalized play written by the same white woman.

Oh, by the way, here is the premise of the original play:

““Emmett Down In My Heart” suggests that Carolyn Bryant was frightened by her abusive husband and was reticent about even telling Roy Bryant about the incident.  In fact, it suggests that Maurice Wright, Till’s cousin, was jealous of Emmett, therefore approached Roy Bryant and told him that Emmett whistled at Carolyn.  It’s suggested Maurice did this in order to get a 50 cent store credit.” ~ Emmett Down In My Heart Review

I will close with this, the tone-deafness of the creation and production of this “opera” in the wake of the recent tragedies - the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and others is astonishing to me.  Though I am disgusted, I am not shocked. PWI’s have been using Black stories as trauma porn for centuries. Until Black art, Black artists, and Black narratives are valued and invested in instead of being exploited, there will always be a Clare Coss. This saddens me, but white people, this should sicken and shame you.

Carla Stillwell is the Executive Director at The Stillwell Institute for Black Art in Chicago, IL