By Ifa Bayeza

Last Friday, August 28th, marked the anniversary of three pivotal events of the last half-century of American history—events which have brought black Americans from the pervasive oppression they had endured since Emancipation to the next stage of the freedom struggle we face today.

Obama speaking one day before accepting the nomination for the Presidency of the United States

The two later events in this chain from the mid-1950s to the present were moments of extraordinary triumph. The first, in stark contrast, was one of a shocking, profound tragedy. Yet, looking back on it, that event’s very horror presaged all the victories that were to follow.

One year ago, on August 28, 2008, Barack Obama accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for the office of President of the United States. It was a crystal Denver evening, a twilight sky. He stood before a crowd of nearly 90,000 packed into the Denver Stadium, and in addition, before a record-breaking global audience of millions. It was a groundbreaking event, the first African-American Presidential nominee, a landmark full of promise. In his eloquent acceptance speech, Mr. Obama spoke often of this notion of “promise,” chronicling our nation’s progress from its revolutionary birth over two hundred thirty years ago.

It was fitting that the date marked the anniversary of another pivotal American event, another day of promise.  “Forty-five years ago today,” said Mr. Obama, “[that promise] brought Americans from every corner of this land to stand together on a Mall in Washington, before Lincoln’s Memorial to hear a young preacher from Georgia speak of his dream.” The event, of course, was the 1963 March on Washington; the “young preacher,” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Another anniversary is marked by August 28th as well, another pivotal American event. Fifty-four years ago, while visiting his family in Mississippi, fourteen-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Louis Till was abducted and killed by a group of white men for the alleged offense of whistling at a white store clerk. In the desolate hours of a moonless Sunday morning, he was subjected to a ruthless torture that brought about his death shortly after dawn, August 28, 1955.

Two moments of triumph and one of high tragedy … Perhaps it is serendipity that these three events share the same date. But it does not seem so; for their impact and transformational power are undeniable.

Among African Americans, the story of Emmett Till has continued to resonate through the decades, rippling through time in wave after wave of influence. His murder and his mother’s subsequent decision to have an open-casket funeral are believed by many to mark the beginning of the modern Civil Rights Movement – with good reason. Later that same year, 1955, on an otherwise ordinary December afternoon, when Rosa Parks boarded a Montgomery Alabama bus, she was thinking about Emmett’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley. That reflection played a role in Mrs. Parks’ refusal to give up her seat, to refuse on that day to acquiesce to Jim Crow segregation. The ensuing Montgomery bus boycott gave Martin Luther King, Jr., his first national platform.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking at the March on Washington

A few years later, Sunflower County, Mississippi, native Fannie Lou Hamer, upon seeing the brother of J.W. Milam, one of Emmett’s confessed murderers, among the sheriff’s deputies confronting her when she attempted to register to vote, decided that day that she would go to jail, rather than submit. She committed her life to activism, no matter the cost. The decision took her all the way to the 1964 National Democratic Convention. This forty-four year old sharecropper’s public plea before the party’s Credential Committee brought the all-white Dixiecrat stranglehold of the Democratic Party to an end, thus paving the way for Mr. Obama’s ascension nearly fifty years later.

Muhammad Ali, who is the same age as Emmett would have been, derailed a train in a teenage act of protest upon hearing of Emmett’s murder. With the maturing of his consciousness, Ali became a symbol of black excellence and power, worldwide. Like him, current NAACP Chairman Julian Bond, civil rights scholar Cleveland Sellers and many other activists who came of age in that time, credit the Till case with the beginning of their political awakening. Emmett was the first spark of consciousness for black youth across the country and he became a symbol of the youth-centered character of the Movement from that moment.

The murder of Emmett Till provoked other emblems of the coming Civil Rights Movement. The spontaneous outpouring of grief of the 50,000 plus mourners who lined the streets of Chicago for the viewing of Emmett’s body foreshadowed the mass, non-violent protest gathering that would be the hallmark of the Movement. As President Obama noted in his speech celebrating the 100th anniversary of the NAACP, when Emmett Till’s uncle Mose Wright summoned “the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew,” Wright’s dramatic open court challenge to Jim Crow was a harbinger of the scores of civil rights demonstrations and trials to come. The work of journalists across the color line during the court proceedings set the blueprint for how Civil Rights would be covered and for the interracial cooperation that would also be the Movement’s signature. The boycott of the Milam-Bryant family stores, driving the family of Emmett’s killers out of business, predated the Montgomery bus boycott by nearly a year.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, came eight years to the day after Emmett’s death. When Dr. King spoke about dreams deferred, he was perhaps referencing the lost promise of Emmett Till, the first child soldier casualty of the modern Civil Rights Movement. The unwitting hero, in his life, in his death, and in his inspiration, propelled us all.

Emmett Till and his mother, Mamie Bradley, 1950

The profound sense of loss and the impassioned commitment that Emmett Till inspired in my generation is matched by the profound sense of hope that President Obama has inspired in this generation. Just as we all became Emmett, a whole generation of youth today can imagine becoming President.

So when I think of August 28th, that bright white sunlight on the DC Mall and that glorious twilight evening in Denver, I also remember the dark and perilous night when a young boy on the threshold of manhood walked alone, and how his journey changed the course of our nation. From desperation to inspiration, from tragedy and triumph, this date in history will for many reasons be a day to remember and honor — always. We should celebrate, but let us not forget the great cost and sacrifice of others, delivering such possibility and promise to us. And let us not squander the moment, but as our forty-fourth president has suggested, “seize our future, each and every day.”

Ifa Bayeza is the recipient of a Eugene O’Neill National Playwright’s Center Fellowship and the 2009 Edgar Award for her play, The Ballad of Emmett Till, which received its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in May 2008.

This essay first appeared in a slightly different version in “What’s Going On–Dawoud- Dawoud Bey’s Blog.”