White Sox Include Emmett Till on Chicago's 'Famous People' List on Scoreboard for Some Sick Reason
By Jerry Trotta
A tasteless gaffe by the Chicago White Sox could genuinely see somebody fired within the coming days.
During Saturday's clash against the Minnesota Twins, the Guaranteed Rate Field scoreboard displayed a list of famous individuals from the city of Chicago for all fans to see. It included celebrities like renowned Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak and legendary actor and director Orson Welles.
But that's not what caught everybody's attention. Pictured in between Sajak and Welles was Emmett Till. And one swift Google search of his name is all you need to realize just how obscene and senseless Till's inclusion was. WARNING: it's immensely disturbing.
Back in 1955, Till was murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. The woman, still alive to this very day, took 50 YEARS to admit that the whistling never actually happened, a revelation that was egregiously and immorally late.
Her husband's half-brother subsequently beat Emmett half-to-death for whistling, shot him to death, and barbarically left his dead body in a river.
We are truly speechless.
We won't rule out the possibility of this being a genuine mistake and we're only saying that because of just how heinous this blunder was.
It did nothing but remind thousands of ticket holders and now millions of Twitter users of the sheer atrocity and inhumanity that racism was when it was at its peak. Expect the White Sox to address this if the backlask ensues.