Written by Lexx Thornton
Priscilla Williams-Till wore a white T-shirt featuring a collage of old black-and-white photos of a young man and his mother as she spoke in front of a crowd in the Mississippi Capitol rotunda about the 1955 murder of her relative, Emmett Till.
She told the crowd of lawmakers, family, and friends that she is running for U.S. Senate as a Democrat against incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Williams-Till said she’s frustrated by Hyde-Smith’s leadership and her approach to issues related to race.
“To bring about justice is to change justice with leadership, and that’s the most important thing that can happen, is you have to show leadership by example,” she said at the press conference on Aug. 28.
Williams-Till, whose distant cousin was the victim of a lynching, said she was also motivated to run partly due to the senator’s 2018 remark about a public hanging.
Hyde-Smith, during a November 2, 2018 campaign event, praised a cattle rancher who had shown up to support her. “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be in the front row,” she said in the video, first reported by Lamar White, Jr.
The senator later said she apologized “to anyone offended.” The Jackson Free Press reported the same month that her former junior high basketball coach recalled hearing the phrase at the segregation academy that the senator attended in the 1970s.
Hyde-Smith won the Nov. 27, 2018, special runoff election against Democrat Mike Espy, the Black former U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary. Voters then elected her for a regular six-year term over Espy in 2020; her term ends in January 2027.
“We have a sitting person that’s representing the state of Mississippi, like Cindy Hyde-Smith, who made the comment, ‘If I was invited to a public hanging, I’d be in the front row.’ And she represents this state,” Williams-Till said at the press conference. “Well, I represent this state, too, and God has directed my path. We will change the hate that’s come out of Mississippi.”
Two white men murdered Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 after a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, accused him of whistling at her. He was 14 at the time of his death. An all-white jury found the two white men who were charged with his murder, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, not guilty.
Till’s murder helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, ensured the world saw his battered body and went on to devote her life to the fight for civil rights and against racial injustice.
Priscilla Williams-Till is a native of Jackson and a graduate of Lanier Junior Senior High School, Jackson State University, and Belhaven University. She said she wants to be a leader in her community and advocate for its needs in Congress.
“My purpose for running for United States Senate is that I can influence the legal system by introducing laws that help shape legal interpretation that address systemic injustice, federal investigation into police departments, police reform, or even discriminatory zoning laws,” she told the Mississippi Free Press on Sept. 5.
The candidate proposes expanding Medicaid and other health-care programs in Mississippi, though expansion is up to the state Legislature. She said she disapproves of cutting Medicaid services, especially for rural hospitals.
