| By Fr. Sean McManus, President, Irish National Caucus. Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C.
The just-published 420-page book The Barn, by Wright Thompson, is about the barn in which the 14-year-old black boy Emmett Till, visiting from Chicago, was tortured and executed/ lynched in 1955 in Mississippi, and about how so much was covered up, still to this day. Indeed, the barn itself was not generally known as the actual murder site. About 15 years ago, I made a personal pilgrimage to the sacred sites in Mississippi where the civil rights martyrs were murdered: Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, the three activists murdered in Philadelphia (MS), James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, so forth and so on. (And cried silently at each site, just as I do at the graves of Irish patriots who gave their lives for Irish freedom). But I did not know about the barn and only visited the remains of the store in Money in which Emmett had allegedly whistled at the white woman whose husband owned the store. That accusation, true or false, in those days, was enough to guarantee young innocent Emmett’s murder. Thompson says something that is very relevant to the discussion on the Legacy Act of The King-in-Parliament: “The more I looked at the story of the barn… the more I understood that the tragedy of humankind isn’t that sometimes a few depraved individuals do what the rest of us could never do. It’s that the rest of us hide those hateful things from view, never learning the lesson that hate grows stronger and more resistant when it’s pushed underground. There lies the true horror of Emmett Till’s murder… Which is why so many have fought literally and figuratively for so long to keep the reality from view.” (Page 12). ‘Pushing underground…’ That’s the story of the British Empire – the story of The-King (or Queen or Monarch)-in-Parliament… and the story of the Legacy Bill that King Charles III turned into the Legacy Act by his royal assent, which is all about protecting the crown forces and their political bosses (the king being the boss of bosses). Because as George Orwell said: “Who controls the present, controls the past.” For 855 years – and counting – England has controlled Ireland’s present and past. And England is not going to tell the truth about what it did in Ireland or any of the countries it oppressed in its racist, genocidal empire. So, we all have to tell the truth about what England did and is still doing in Ireland. I conclude by referring to another great book (which I made sure to mention in our constant Irish Congressional briefings): Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire (2022) by Harvard Professor Caroline Elkins. How perfect is that title in the context of the Legacy Act of The King-in-Parliament. And, the book blurb on the back page, in part, irresistibly declares: “[Professor Elkins] makes clear when Britain could no longer maintain control over the violence it provoked and enacted, it retreated from the empire, destroying and hiding incriminating evidence of its policy and practices.” And, please God, that is perhaps what the deplorable Legacy Act of The King-in-Parliament also heralds: England’s final withdrawal from Northern Ireland – enabling as the Irish National Caucus internet petition calls for: ‘Ireland, too, has the right to be one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.’ This magnificent petition now has 31,661 signers, with more than 1,000,000 petition views. To sign the petition, go to this link: www.change.org/IrelandOneNation. |
