Praying with Mamie Till Mobley

“...what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”

Best known as the mother of Emmett Till, Mamie Till had extensive conversations with God during her years of grief and action for social justice. Mother Mamie was deeply religious. She often compared Emmett’s fate to the crucifixion of Jesus, and she herself established martyr imagery for Emmett. She was born Mamie Elizabeth Carthan in Webb, Mississippi, November 23, 1921, she passed on January 6, 2003. Mamie is known for her brilliance in education justice and advocacy. But hers was a long road of finding triumph in her life’s purpose, after suffering to the point of self-harm and suicidal thoughts. This is her account of her darkest day of picking up the pieces after losing her son to racial terror:

“So I was just sitting in the dining room feeling sorry for myself. “What am I going to do?” Almost as soon as I asked that question, the answer came. “End it all.” Oh, I don’t know what possessed me. I really don’t have any idea at all. But I got up and walked over to a window. Well, that window was painted shut, so I went to another window. That one led out to a gangway, a stairwell, where I figured no one would find me until my body started to smell. No, that wouldn’t do. I looked at the front windows. 

One was a picture window that didn’t open, but then I couldn’t jump from those windows on the sides, either. Children played out front and that would be so traumatic for them. Besides, after I thought about it a little more, I realized something else that was very important: I wasn’t wearing pants. I didn’t wear pants back then. I was wearing a dress that Mama had made for me. Oh, I remember that dress. It was sleeveless, real tight in the waist with a long flared skirt. It was a white dress, white with a floral pattern, some kind of design in it, and that design was pink. That was one of my favorite dresses. I couldn’t stand the thought of jumping in that dress. More important, I couldn’t stand the thought that my skirt might fly up. 

Just then, as I was thinking about all that, the phone rang. It was a reporter. He was thinking about doing a follow-up story on me and he wanted to know what I was planning to do. Well, I couldn’t tell him I was planning to jump out the window. So I said I wanted to go back to school and become a teacher. I turned around as if to ask, “Who said that?” 

Now, I don’t know to this day where it came from, but he said he would take me to register for classes. I mean, he was just going to carry me down to the college and walk me through it. That was fine with me, because I didn’t even know where to go. I hadn’t exactly given this a whole lot of thought.

As it turns out, the place to go was Chicago Teachers College. He took me there and, unfortunately, we were told that registration for classes had just closed. Before I even got a chance to start thinking about those windows back home again, he somehow convinced them to admit just one more student, and that’s how it all started. That’s how I was able to start over. I was going to go to college. I was going to become a teacher. I would be able to work with children, to teach them, to help shape them, to introduce them to a whole world of possibilities. In the process, a whole world of possibilities was opening up to me. 

Throughout my life I have heard a great many stories about how people received the call to their life’s mission. I have to smile when I recall how I received mine. For me, the call came by phone, from a reporter.”

from Mamie’s autobiography, The Death of Innocence

Let’s pray together, 

Well Lord, we are coming to you this morning, again, in the spirit of fear. We hate it here, and history has not helped. We cannot escape the cries of the mothers whose arms are empty, the cries of the children who cannot mourn their dead or comfort the grieving. We are feeble in faith, weakening in wonder, and growing weary of what feels like a delay. Yet will we trust - 

read Mamie’s words and meditate on her experience, then respond as the people, reading aloud or in silence as you pray.

Mamie: “I had a nice apartment in Chicago, I had a good job, I had a son. When something happened to Negroes in the south I said “That’s their business, not mine.” Now I know how wrong I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.”

People: Listen, Lord; we are so unaware of all the wrongs we ought to grieve. Will you send your Spirit of discernment and grace? Will you forgive us our ignorance and empower us as you have done so for our mother in the movement? Make us bold in compassion. Send us with the Holy Spirit’s dove as well as the fire, to make everyone’s liberation business our own.

Mamie: We cannot afford the luxury of self-pity… we must teach our children to weather the hurricanes of life, pick up the pieces and rebuild. 

People: Listen Lord, Welcomer of children, Savior of all God’s babies born under Your hallowed name, will you teach us to rebuild all that we can before they must bear any unjust burden at all. Your yoke is easy, O God, and your burden is light. As often as we come to you seeping with self pity, You O Lord have taught us how to rest. Will you make us an example, this morning? Will you mold us to model your rest- that blessed, active rest, which leads to resilience. 

Mamie: God told me, “I have taken one from you, but I will give you thousands.”

People: Lord, we praise You for the example of our mother and teacher, Emmett Till’s mother. We exalt Your name for the multitudes you brought to her for the pain of her sacrifice. We adore Your name, O God, for You are the One who restores. 

Listen Lord; we want to ask a special blessing in Mamie’s spirit: we want you to look down on the people who are suffering from racial terror.  Your Native children are being terrorized by the government that our tax monies uphold. Your Asian children are being stalked and attacked, blamed for the spread of sickness. 

Will you give loved ones in the thousands to all of those who have suffered loss? Will you return abundance for lack? Will You repay these sacrifices by the hundred fold? Will You vindicate Your children who are unemployed, overworked, working poor? Will you be a shelter and a shield for the infected, the affected, and the at risk.

We know you can do it, O God. We believe your mercy is for those who seek You. 

So we are coming to you this morning, asking that you will do it. Give us the song to sing “won’t God do it!? Won’t He will.

All:  Let’s pray this passionate petition together with Mother Mamie, in her own words. Dear Lord, hear our prayer: With each day, we give thanks for the blessings of life—the blessings of another day and the chance to do something with it. Something good. Something significant. Something helpful. No matter how small it might seem. We want to keep making a difference. Amen.

Songs: Lord Help me to Hold Out, performed by Donna Williams // Never Seen the Righteous Forsaken, Donald Lawrence // Rise Up, Andra Day

Scripture: 1 Samuel 2.1-10 // Romans 12

Images: Portraits of Mamie Till and Emmett // The Friends, Max Ginsburg