January 17, 2022

Deacon Arthur Miller, MLK Day speaker, recalls schoolmate Emmett Till

REGIONAL
By Rebecca Drake

 

SPRINGFIELD – “He wasn’t special. He was just a little boy.”

Deacon Arthur Miller, of the Hartford Archdiocese, shared memories of Emmett Till, his boyhood neighbor and schoolmate, during a Jan. 16 talk at the Bishop Marshall Center adjacent to St. Michael’s Cathedral, here.

Sponsored by the Springfield Diocese’s Knights and Ladies of St. Peter Claver, Deacon Miller was the 2022 Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Day speaker following the 8:30 a.m. Mass at the cathedral. He also assisted Msgr. Christopher Connelly, cathedral rector, at the Mass and delivered the homily, describing the scene of the wedding at Cana.

“We all know what happened. His mother gave him that look – we all have received that look,” Deacon Miller said, to knowing nods and laughter from the congregation. Continuing the homily, he said the transformation of water into wine “is the transformation that Christ can give to all of us.”

“We must empty ourselves and then let Christ fill us up, and do what Christ tells us to do,” he said.

“Have we emptied ourselves yet? Are you holding on to past angers and resentments?” Deacon Miller asked. He told the congregation, “We must fill ourselves up with the Jordan water of baptism.”

Deacon Miller cited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as “a great transformer” who called for transformation in the nation.

Addressing the topic of racism, Deacon Miller referred to a passage from Psalm 139: “I will praise you for I am wonderfully and fearfully made.” Assuring all present at the Mass that they were “wonderfully and fearfully” made by God, Deacon Miller said that if they experience hatred because of their race, or any other reason, “It’s not you, it’s them.”

He noted that the hatred that killed his schoolmate Emmett Till was supported by the state of Mississippi during the Jim Crow era, but urged the congregation to focus their lives on Christ’s call to love.

“Anything that doesn’t call you to love, is calling you to something else,” Deacon Miller said. Regarding injustice, he said, “This nation is called to transformation,” drawing applause and “Amens!” from the congregation.

Encouraging listeners to seek justice, he said if he added an “11^th Commandment” for Christians, it would be, “Thou shalt not be a bystander.”

After the Mass, Deacon Miller spoke to a larger-than-usual gathering for the coffee hour presented by the Knights and Ladies of St. Peter Claver and members of the Springfield Diocese’s Black Catholic Apostolate. As parishioners scrambled to set up extra tables and chairs in the Bishop Marshall Center, Deacon Miller sat down for a coffee break before speaking to those gathered about his experiences growing up in the South Side of Chicago and nearby Chatham, Illinois, in the 1940s and 50s.

Noting that his parents were college graduates, the family nonetheless was subject to segregation when they moved from the South Side to the suburban neighborhood of Chatham. He recalled that the first time he and his family members attended the Catholic Church nearest their home, an all-white parish, the priest announced publicly that he did not want the new family in his parish. But Deacon Miller’s mother would have none of that.

“That man is not going to put me out of my church,” he recalled his mother saying. “And she sat in the front pew during subsequent Masses and prayed for the conversion of that priest.”

Of his neighbor and schoolmate Emmett Till, Deacon Miller, said, “He was just a kid.”

“He was a little boy, an unwilling martyr. He was murdered because that society of Money, Mississippi harbored hatred.”

“Dr. King came to change that,” he said. “Those that hate need to live in their hate. Dr. King was saying you are wonderfully made and beautifully made.”

Deacon Miller described Emmett, who was a classmate of his older brother, Warren, as very smart and protective of Warren. He said Emmett was a neighborhood boy who, along with other boys, got into trouble for breaking windows and were punished by cleaning up the yard of man whose windows were broken.

“And then Emmett was killed. And I didn’t understand it,” he said. “We couldn’t understand why a little boy was killed.”

Deacon Miller illustrated his dedication to the “11^th Commandment” about not being a bystander by way of a personal narrative about a girl in his seventh-grade class who was bullied throughout junior high and high school. The girl, Victoria, also left notes every day for young Arthur, saying that she liked him. Although he never bullied her himself, he regrets that he never stood up for her.

Encouraging his audience to actively address poverty and injustice in their own neighborhoods, Deacon Miller cited the example of his 108-year-old Aunt Anita, who is still healthy and ambulatory. “She feeds the hungry. And she sits with the people she feeds – the homeless, the hungry.”

He said his aunt’s actions encourage him to persevere in his own activism.

“I’m going to live until the day I die,” he said. “You live until the day the Lord calls you home. You love until the day the Lord calls you home”

“The truth is,” Deacon Miller said, concluding his talk, “’We Shall Overcome.’”

A video version of this story will be featured on an upcoming edition of “Real to Reel,” which airs Saturday evenings at 7 on WWLP-22NEWS.