Langston Hughes's "Mississippi—1955": a note on revisions and an appeal for reconsideration

African American Review, Spring, 2003 by Christopher Metress

This disregard for "Mississippi--1955" has lead to an even more glaring problem. In some ways, we could say that "Mississippi--1955" survives in part in its revised offspring "Mississippi." While some of the poem does not make it from its original form to the codified Collected Poems version, a good portion of it does. What doesn't survive these revisions is Emmett Till. Hughes originally wrote the poem in memory of Till ("This poem is written in memory of the dead boy, Emmett Till, whose body was found shot through the head, beaten and bruised, in the Tallahatchie River, 120 miles south of Memphis"), but successive versions of the poem--and erroneous leads as to its initial publication--have all but erased this memory. Of the critical studies listed above, only Rampersad's Life of Langston Hughes mentions Emmett Till. Rampersad does so twice (261, 270), but in neither case does he specify that Hughes wrote a poem in response to the murder. Moreover, a perusal of Mandelik and Schatt's concordance reveals (mis leadingly) that Emmett Till is mentioned only one time in all of Hughes's poetry, in the poem "Ask Your Momma."

Such neglect carries over into areas outside of Hughes studies. In a 1995 essay entitled "Reflections on the Death of Emmett Till," Anne Sarah Rubin surveys scholarly, autobiographical, and literary responses to Till's murder. As Rubin notes, "Some writers described the effect of Emmett Till's murder in their autobiographies and memoirs; others refracted their memories through literature, songs, plays, and poems" (59). Those writers who did this kind of refracting? Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Endesha Ida Mae Holland, Bebe Moore Campbell, and Lewis Nordan. Considering that Hughes's "Mississippi--1955" was one of the first literary responses to the murder--and the first such response by an African-American writer of national reputation--the omission of his work from this list might seem an egregious one, until we consider that Hughes's own revisions have helped to bury the poem. How much can we fault Rubin for not discussing this poem by a major American writer when those who devote themselv es to studying his work do not acknowledge it? The same neglect of Hughes occurs in the most comprehensive study of Till's murder. In Death in the Delta: The Story of Emmett Till, Stephen J. Whitfield, like Sarah Anne Rubin, discusses the enduring influence of Till's murder upon the imagination of writers and artists. Again, Brooks, Baldwin, Morrison, and others are mentioned, but Hughes, not unexpectedly, is not.

Near the end of her essay, Rubin makes a powerful claim about Emmett Till and the operations of social memory. "As he was for so many people," Rubin writes, "Emmett Till's enduring legacy is the variety of memories we have of him. Each Till, innocent or impudent, brash or brutalized, is a piece of collective memory, a facet of not only his specific life but of the civil rights movement as a whole" (63). In failing to remember "Mississippi-- 1955," and its dedication "to the memory of Emmett Till," we are failing to acknowledge the full force of Till's "enduring legacy." Granted, that failure is tied in great part to the decisions Hughes made to write Till out of the poem, to remove, as it were, his "remains." As scholars, however, we can write Till back into the poem. We cannot do this literally, of course, but with proper annotation and recognition of the poem's initial form and dedication, we can remind Hughes's readers of the poem's origin and its proper place within a specific historical discourse. In thi s way, we not only help to put Till's remains back into the poem and assure that it is repositioned in the collective memory, but we also help to resist the effacement of history that marks so much discussion of African-American writing. When, in 1955, the state of Mississippi wanted to bury Till's remains in Mississippi, his mother--Mamie Till Bradley--insisted that her son's casket be returned home to Chicago. When it was, she insisted that her songs remains be displayed for public viewing. She did so, she claimed, because she "want[ed] the whole world to see what they did to my boy." In recovering the original form and dedication of "Mississippi-- 1955," we too keep Till's remains from being buried in a place where they will be, and have been, forgotten. In this way, we too can help the world remember--and, in turn, never forget--what they did to Mrs. Bradley's boy.