The Other Side of the Coyne (The Emmett Till Effect)

"The same things that causes one man to commit sucide, is the same thing that will cause another man to redouble his efforts and succeed." I was the sixth of seven children, born to a single mother and grew up in the Jamaica Plain housing projects, just on the other side of the Roxbury line; which was in 1956, considered "a suburb". At 9 yrs. old, I wanted to be the first black president of the United States. Senator Edward Brooke had just been elected the first black Senator of Mass. and I was proud of that feat. However, at age 12 I saw a picture in Jet Magazine, that filled my heart, soul and mind with a fear, anger and hatred that would last for the next 40 yrs. of my life. It was a picture of Emmett Till, a 13 yr. old black child from Chicago, who had went to visit his aunt in Mississippi, and made the mistake of whistling or winking at a white woman. The end results of what the Ku Klux Klan did to him was the worst thing I had ever seen. He had been shot and battered so badly that he looked more like a blob than a human being, less known a 13 yr. old boy. My heart almost jumped out of my body as I threw up all over the kitchen floor. Nothing and no one could ever explain to me why white people hated all black people so much that they would do something that cold, wicked and cruel to a child, no matter what color they were. I went from being an all A student to a C student overnight it seemed I began hooking school and hanging out with those kids my mother didn't approve of. I made it up in my mind that I was going to be a gangster like Cagney or Bogey or Edward G. Robinson. I was aroused and determined that one day I would be just like them. The gangsters they played, became real within my mind. As time moved on, I fell deeper and deeper into my depression and mood swings. Deeper and deeper into drugs, alcohol and the criminal world and further and further away from my dreams as a child to become the First Black President of the United States.