The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.
In the summer of 1955, Mamie Till, Emmett Till’s mother, kissed her only son goodbye as he boarded a train to Mississippi and left to visit his family. She constantly reminded the youth of the unavoidable racism in the state and the vast differences between Chicago and Mississippi. Mamie Till feared for her son’s safety as he was not aware of how to act towards the unforgiving white population, and if a black person went against the orders of a white person, it could lead to the beating, or in some cases, even death, of the black man. In the south, the authorities would often turn their heads once an African American was beaten or murdered. (Contemporary Black Biography)
Shortly after arriving in Mississippi, the youth was put to work in picking cotton with the rest of his cousins. On one particularly hot day and after picking cotton, Emmett and a few other black boys went to a local store in Money, Mississippi. The store, which was owned and ran by a young white couple named Carolyn and Roy Bryant, catered mainly to the black field workers in the small to...
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Spencer, Robyn. "Emmett Till." Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History. Gale, 2006. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
"The Emmit Till Case, 1955." DISCovering U.S. History. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Student Resources in Context. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
"Emmett Till." American Decades. Ed. Judith S. Baughman, et al. Vol. 6: 1950-1959. Detroit: Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
Younge, Gary. "America dreaming: the horrors of segregation bound the US civil rights movement together. Fifty years on from Martin Luther King's great speech, inequality persists--but in subtler ways." New Statesman [1996] 23 Aug. 2013: 20+. Student Resources in Context. Web. 28 Jan. 2014.
"The Emmit Till Case, 1955." DISCovering U.S. History. Detroit: Gale, 1997. Student Resources in Context. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.
On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubblegum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in the South. It sparked the beginning of a flourish of both national and international media coverage of the Civil Rights violations in America.
In contrast to blacks living in the South, Emmett Till was raised in a “thriving, middle-class black neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side” (Biography.com Editors). The neighborhood comprised of several black-owned businesses and companies. Unfortunately, he was unaware of the racial discrimination and segregation transpiring in the South when he visited his family in the state of Mississippi. Emmett had attended a segregated school previously, but he was unprepared for “the level of segregation he encountered in Mississippi” (History.com Staff). Chicago and Mississippi are
In the months following the Brown v. Board of Education decision C. Vann Woodward wrote a series of lectures that would provide the basis for one of the most historically significant pieces of nonfiction literature written in the 20th century. Originally, Woodward’s lectures were directed to a local and predominantly southern audience, but as his lectures matured into a comprehensive text they gained national recognition. In 1955 Woodward published the first version of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, a novel that would spark a fluid historical dialogue that would continue for the next twenty years. Woodward foresaw this possibility as he included in the first edition, “Since I am…dealing with a period of the past that has not been adequately investigated, and also with events of the present that have come too rapidly and recently to have been properly digested and understood, it is rather inevitable that I shall make some mistakes. I shall expect and hope to be corrected.” Over this time period Woodward released four separate editions, in chapter form, that modified, corrected, and responded to contemporary criticisms.
Eibling, Harold H., et al., eds. History of Our United States. 2nd edition. River Forest, Ill: Laidlaw Brothers, 1968.
Emmett Till was fourteen years old when he died, as a result of racism. He was innocent, and faced the consequences of discrimination at a young age. His death was a tragedy, but will he will live on as somebody who helped African-Americans earn their rights. Emmett Till’s death took place in a ruthless era in which his life was taken from him as a result of racism during the Civil Rights Movement.
Emmett Louis Till, a young, black boy, only fourteen-years-old, lived in Chicago and traveled to the South in the mid-twentieth century. Although he lived very few years, his life and death have impacted the lives of everyone in America’s present and past. This boy was accused, hunted, brutally beaten and eventually murdered because he was black. His murderers were acquitted even with plenty of evidence against them because they were white. Emmett was said to have sparked the Civil Rights Movement, which inspired people like Rosa Parks and many more.
Up until 1955, many of the Northern, white Americans were unaware of the extent of the racism in the ‘Southern States’, one instance in 1955 changed that greatly. The death of Emmet Till became a vital incident in the civil rights movement dude to the horrific pictures of the young boy that circulated throughout America. It is thought that up to 50,000 people viewed the body of Emmet Till, as it appeared in a number of newspapers and magazines, this greatly increased awareness of racism i...
08 May 2014. Crowe, Chris. " Selected Quotations." The Lynching of Emmett Till.
Tom Robinson and Bob Ewell’s case brought out the historical realities of Jim Crow and the Great Depression. Oh how it was a depressing sight, Jim Crow laws pushing the blame and hatred onto our dark skinned brothers and sisters. Even though the town was floating with Jim Crow ideals and hatred for Tom, Atticus willingly bore some of that hatred by taking the case. Tom should have won this case hands down if it were based on integrity and character, but instead he had to be judged on the account of eleven white racist jurors. The historical realities of the Great Depression and Jim Crow ideals were illustrated promptly in how the top lived and how they handled state and city
Like any other child his age, Emmett had the potential to live out a wonderful life. Although afflicted with polio, Emmett Till still managed to enjoy a happy childhood in the care of his mother. Even at school Emmett maintained stable friendships with many of his classmates due to his charm and comedic personality. When Emmett was not spending time at school, he was engrossed in baseball with his friends. Emmett’s mother saw his affection for the sport and would drive him and his friends to the baseball field for them to take part in the sport they truly loved. As he grew older, Emmett volunteered himself to his community. He would perform errands and chores for his neighbors without asking for a single penny, but it did not take long before Emmett desired to explore the rest of the nation and eventually took a train with his cousins back to Mississippi (Aretha 13-14). He was cherished by people who knew him and who were close with him. Emmett was enjoying his life until they robbed him of his adolescence. Before Mamie let him go off to Mississippi, “ … she had drilled him on proper etiquette over and over again” (Aretha 16). His mother informed him of the racism and violence directed towards blacks down south, but he paid little attention to what she told him. Often in the southern states, “ … whites
During the post-WWII period, blacks fight for desegregation resulted in violence, murder, economic warfare and obstruction by local and state governments. The repression, violence and murders were a significant setback among Negroes in the postwar years. For example, the death of Emmett Till was not just another statistic in the tragic history of American lynchings (Feldstein, page 290). However, it was a defensive act on the half of white southerners to the decision in the Brown v. Board of Education. The murder of the fourteen-year-old African American Emmett Till was a gruesome act. Rob Bryant, twenty-four years old, and his half-brother J.W. Milam, thirty-six, kidnapped Emmett Till, a Chicago native, at gunpoint from his relatives’ cabin
Within a week, till would be dead at the hands of a group of whites headed by two half-brothers. Till who had grown in Chicago with his mother and was unfamiliar with segregation rules of the south even though his mother talked with him about the differences before she put him on the train. Then too, till was just a young man who liked to joke around with friends and was always up for a dare possibly on a dare, till either wolf whistled or flirted In some way with the white female clerk. He may have just been trying to impress his cousins and new friends, but move would cost him his life and his mother would lose her only child. Four days later, the female clerk would tell her husband and him and his half-brother would kid nap till from his relatives home and cruelly murder him by shooting him in the head and wrapping a cotton gin fan around his neck with barbed wire. They threw his mangled body into the Tallahatchie River where it wasn’t found until three days after the murder. His mother was only able to identify his mutilated corps by his father’s ring which he wore on his ring finger. The two murders were tried by all white juries and were acquitted of the crime and even bragged about it in a national publication, but till did not die in vain because his murder such an innocent “crime” sent shock views through the nation when his open casket displayed for thousands of mourners
In 1955, a fourteen year old black boy from Chicago named Emmet Till was murdered. The young child was on trip to see his family to help and learn to be a hard working man. He was just fourteen when he allegedly flirted with a white woman, Carolyn Bryant in a convenient store in Money, Mississippi. Days later her husband, Roy Bryant returned home from a business trip and word spread around town like rapid fire. When Mr. Bryant heard about the incident he rounded up his brother-in-law, went to the house where Emmet Till was staying and dragged him out against his will. They took him to the bank of the Tallahatchie River where Carolyn’s brother and Roy Bryant made Emmet Till carry a cotton gin fan, made him strip and beat him unconscious. Then,
Tens of thousands filed past Till’s remains, but it was the publication of the searing funeral image in Jet, with a stoic Mamie gazing at her murdered child’s ravaged body, that forced the world to reckon with the brutality of American racism." Vann R. Newkirk wrote "the trial of his killers became a pageant illuminating the tyranny of white supremacy". The state of Mississippi tried two defendants, but they were speedily acquitted by an all-white jury.“Emmett’s murder,” historian Tim Tyson writes, “would never have become a watershed historical moment without Mamie finding the strength to make her private grief a public matter.” The visceral response to his mother's decision to have an open-casket funeral mobilized the black community throughout the U.S. "Young black people such as Julian Bond, Joyce Ladner and others who were born around the same time as Till were galvanized into action by the murder and trial." They often see themselves as the "Emmett Till Generation."
Winslow, Barbara. "The Historians Perspective of Title IX." The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. 25 Mar. 2012. .