Michael Irvin needs serious history lesson when discussing Marriott case: He's no Emmett Till

Michael Irvin needs a history lesson. He may actually need many things but a history lesson should be first on the list.

Something he said recently shows him to be a fool. Not just an everyday fool but one who doesn't even understand the true nature of his own history, Black history.

Irvin was accused of improper behavior by a woman employee inside a Marriott hotel lobby during Super Bowl week. He denied the accusations and sued the hotel chain for $100 million. The case has become larger-than-life, in part because Irvin is a comic book character who symbolizes the boisterous television media environment today, and also because the nature of the accusations against him are ugly and sordid.

MORE: Michael Irvin shows video of encounter with Marriott employee; refiles lawsuit in Arizona

At a news conference last week, Irvin said something so staggeringly dense, it's difficult to believe any human being would be so ignorant of the past.

Irvin said the accusations against him were similar to when Black men were falsely accused of assault by white women and subsequently lynched.

“This takes me back to a time where a white woman would accuse a Black man of something, and they would take a bunch of guys that were above the law, run into the barn and put a rope around his foot, drag him through the mud and hang him by the tree,” Irvin said.

He added: “This just blows my mind that in 2023 we still dragging and hanging brothers by a tree.”

I want to break the news to Michael Irvin: He's not Emmett Till.

I don't know if the accusations against Irvin are accurate or not. If he's telling the truth, he's still not a victim of lynching. If he's lying, he's still not a victim of lynching.

Irvin and his lawyers on Tuesday showed a video they say exonerates Irvin. There's not much to see on the video (which is likely the point Irvin is making). It may be a fair point but again, it's not mine, not right now.

Irvin's statement about lynching is so offensive because it's a slap in the face to the thousands of Black people who've been lynched in this country. The NAACP says that from 1882 to 1968, there were 4,743 lynchings in America. Black people were the primary targets of lynching accounting for 3,446 of them (72 percent), the NAACP says. Immigrants were also lynched, as were some white people who were anti-lynching activists.

"Lynchings were violent public acts that white people used to terrorize and control Black people in the 19th and 20th centuries, particularly in the South," writes NAACP.org. "Lynchings typically evoke images of Black men and women hanging from trees, but they involved other extreme brutality, such as torture, mutilation, decapitation, and desecration. Some victims were burned alive.

"A typical lynching involved a criminal accusation, an arrest, and the assembly of a mob, followed by seizure, physical torment, and murder of the victim. Lynchings were often public spectacles attended by the white community in celebration of white supremacy. Photos of lynchings were often sold as souvenir postcards."

More recently, as the NAACP points out, in Texas in 1998, James Byrd was chained to a car by three white supremacists and dragged to his death. There are other modern versions of lynchings including Ahmaud Arbery in 2020, who was killed while jogging near Brunswick, Georgia. The murder of George Floyd is another example.

Does any of that sound remotely like anything Irvin is going through?

If you want to say that Irvin wasn't speaking literally, well, no, read the quote. He was. Even if he was trying to speak figuratively it's such a painfully ignorant position to take.

One of the ugliest moments of lynching was also the most transformative. Till was murdered in 1955 in Mississippi after an alleged interaction with a white woman. Two white men beat Till, who was 14-years-old, nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and threw his body into a river with a 75-pound cotton gin fan attached with barbed wire.

Does any of that sound remotely like anything Irvin is going through?

Till's murder made all of America aware of the horrors of lynching and was one of the sparks of the Civil Rights movement.

Irvin's case is likely going to be around for a long time because Irvin is dug in, and Marriott seems to be ready for a fight.

Meanwhile, Irvin needs to read some books.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Michael Irvin, NFL analyst in Marriott case, needs a history lesson