David Banner Makes Throwback Honoring Teen Murdered In 1955

Mississippi’s David Banner is representing all sides of the state that he hails from, including reminders of the hardships African-Americans faced in their attempt to obtain civil rights in the United States.Banner is launching a line of throwback Jersey’s that will honor the murder of Emmitt Till, a teenager who was murdered in 1955 for […]

Mississippi’s David Banner is representing all sides of the state that he hails from, including reminders of the hardships African-Americans faced in their attempt to obtain civil rights in the United States.Banner is launching a line of throwback Jersey’s that will honor the murder of Emmitt Till, a teenager who was murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman.”I’m wearing a fifty-five on my chest for the year he got murdered,” Banner told AllHipHop.com. “Emmitt Till was a young man who got murdered for winking at a white lady. I’m trying to have everything in the store, around summertime. It’s cold outside right now.”On August 21, 1955, Till arrived in Money, Mississippi from Chicago, to visit his great uncle, Moses Wright.On August 24, 1955 Till joined a group of teenagers, seven boys and one girl and went to a store, Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market in Mississippi, to get refreshments after a long day of picking cotton.Bryant’s Grocery was owned by two whites, Roy and Carolyn Bryant and sold goods to a mostly black clientele of sharecroppers.Children outside of the store later claimed they heard Till whistle at Carolyn Bryant.On August 28, Carolyn’s husband Roy and his half brother J. W. Milam kidnapped Till from his uncle Moses Wright’s house, savagely beat him, took him to the edge of the Tallahatchie River, shot him in the head, tied a large metal fan with bobbed wire around his neck and threw him in the river.The next day Bryant and Milam were charged with Till’s kidnapping and later his murder, when his decomposing body was pulled from the river.The two men were put on trial in Sumner, Mississippi. African-American’s and women were banned from the trial and an all white male found the two men innocent after deliberating only 67 minutes.One of the jurors told a local reporter that they would have reached a decision faster, if they hadn’t “stopped to drink pop [soda].”Banner will release MTA2: Baptized In Dirty Water on December 23.