The Emmett Till Alerts system is named after a 14-year-old black teenager who was murdered in 1955. Her Carolyn Bryant Donham, a white woman, claimed Till whistled at her. This system is modeled after the Amber Alert system.
“Hate crimes and terrorist threats must be taken seriously,” said Carl Snowden of the African American Leadership Conference at a press conference.
When racial violence is reported, the team sorts through the details and decides whether to send an alert to subscribers of the service, Snowden said. The idea is to enable members of local communities where acts of racial violence or hate occur to take appropriate action to protect themselves and their families.
Alert is invite-only for now, but Snowden said he hopes others will be able to sign up for the service after the trial period.
“We’re just getting started. We’ll see how the system works … I think we’ll see this replicated nationally very quickly,” he said.
The first alerts were sent to users on Monday, informing them that the system was officially working. The alarm system has low, medium and high threat levels, with the highest level meaning a high likelihood of violence or death. A warning is sent to 167 black elected leaders, national civil rights organizations, clerics, and other community leaders. The alert system is privately funded and costs about $6,000 a year to operate, Snowden said.
In a launch announcement, Snowden said the alert system’s development came after a recent reported incident of racism in Maryland.
“We are seeing many events in history repeating themselves. We have to be proactive,” Snowden said.
Snowden and others say the system is the first of its kind in the country.
TJC is an organization dedicated to eradicating racial injustice among other issues important to the black community such as voting rights, criminal justice reform, and police brutality.
Civil rights activists James Cheney, 21, Andrew Goodman, 20, and Michael Schwarner, 24, disappeared June 21, 1964 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, six weeks later in August. The body was found on the 4th.
Source: www.cnn.com
