Racism has plagued our nation for over 100 years. It has been marked as a terrible event in African American history, causing pain and sadness till this day. Many African Americans were treated less than humans. African Americans were seen as an inferior race due to the Caucasians believing they were above everyone. Emmett Till was one of the many African Americans to experience racism. Emmett Till was murdered because of Southern Racism, which was built by slavery; this event created a martyr. An example of American racism can be seen in the treatment of Emmett Till. In 1955, there were many but one historical event that shaped the lives of every black African American. Emmett Till was only one of the many African Americans who lost their …show more content…
lives to white cruelty. Emmitt was a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago. Visiting family in Mississippi, he was brutally murdered for flirting with a Caucasian female. To emphasis how much hatred these two men had for this fourteen year old, they didn’t stop there; they gouged out his eyes and shot him in his head. Afterwards they threw him in the river, Emmett Till has become a martyr towards the African American community. During the 1950’s Chicago were experiencing the Jim Crow Era.
This era mostly affected the social and education system for African Americans. Many schools where segregated and given less supplies because they were inferior. Riots also broke out, causing Caucasian cops to retaliate with combat bats and fire hoses, spraying the protesters with water that felt like an icicle hitting their body. Sometimes they would swing the bat, hitting someone as if it could have been a sack full of bricks. Compared to Mississippi, this was an easier life to handle. As Emmitt went to Mississippi, he would soon realize that he has walked into a different kind of racism, a more overt and dangerous depiction of racism than he did in Chicago. Racism still played a big role in America’s society after Emmett Till. In 2015, three whites went to jail for hunting black children, murdering them. Like Emmett Till, these children lost their lives for a cause that was unforgiving and unjust. Being sixty years apart, the idea of racism would have thought to deplete or slow down; yet, it is still something that plagues the world. Emmett is now a famous African American who will never be forgotten. He is one of the faces that can be depicted for Racism. Racism has caused many sadness and death. Treating humans as less than others based on opinions. There are many people who has been treated wrongly, but stand for the rights of African Americans: Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman and Malcolm
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. Emmett Till's death had a powerful effect on Mississippi civil rights activists. Medgar Evers, then an NAACP field officer in Jackson, Mississippi, urged the NAACP nation...
Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1). Flashing forward a few years later past the days of Jim Crow and the fight for civil rights, several, but not all in the younger generation see the members of the black and white race as equal and find it hard to fathom that only a few years ago the atmosphere surrounding racial relations was anything but pleasant.
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.
Emmett Till had been visiting family in the late summer of 1955. He hadn't known the rules in Southern United States. That was his first mistake. Emmett Till, an innocent 14 year old colored boy, found at the bottom of the Tallahatchie River in 1955. 2 white men had been accused of the murder. His mother, Mamie Till, was not about to let someone get away with the murder of her 14 year old son. She wanted the people to see what had been done and Mamie Till wanted justice to be served. Mamie Till was fed up with the inequality and wanted to change it. She had her eyes on the prize.
Emmett Till, 14, went to a store after a long day of picking cotton in the hot sun on August, 24, 1955. He was talking gloating about dating a white girl back in Chicago. Then, the group of friends dared him to go get a date with Carolyn Bryant, the cashier. Although Emmett’s mother tried to dissuade him from behaving as he was still in Chicago, where inequality was not as harsh, and some behaviors were tolerated, Emmett ignored
In the early 1900’s racism was a force to be reckoned with, but not knowing the dangers of the south, Emmett Till was unaware of his actions and the consequences. While visiting his uncle in Mississippi Emmett Till was murdered for whistling at a white woman. Not knowing the dangers of the south Emmett acted like his casual, cocky self. Emmett Till’s death is thought to be the spark of the Civil Rights Movement (Crowe). Even though everyone knew who had murdered Emmitt, the men were never put to justice or charged.
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.
Emmett Till’s death inspired people to try to end racism so African-Americans could be granted their rights and protection. Racism, discrimination, and prejudice had been going on for too long, and it was time to stop it. This inspired many people to hold bus boycotts and protests (PBS). A new era was beginning where racism was considered unjust and hurtful, and people would have to face consequences for their actions. Emmett Till was the beginning of this change. He should be considered a hero because without him who knows what our country would be like. He helped African-Americans to be seen as equal, and not an inferior race. His death was a tragedy, but something good came out of it which was freedom. “ I look to a day when people will not be judge by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character” (BrainyQuote).
Following the shooting of Trayvon Martin, I began to understand the effect that systemic racism could have on the lives of Black people, and how it had already been affecting me.
The social conditions throughout the era were extremely poor. Legal discrimination was around and African Americans were denied democratic rights and freedoms. The southern states would pass strict laws to normalize interactions between white people and African Americans. For example, Jim Crow signs were placed above regularly visited places by everyone, such as water fountains, public facilities, door entrances and exits, etc. Even the most basic rights such as drinking from a water fountain was taken away from African Americans. They would also have separate buildings for African
There have been traces of racism throughout America since the country was founded. Blacks, along with other races, were constantly fighting to be treated equally. Even though the slaves were freed in 1863, they still faced many racial and prejudice issues. However, in the early 1900s, it seemed as if African Americans were flourishing in the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma. The thought of African Americans prospering disgusted most whites to the point they wanted to do something about it. These thoughts and actions caused a horrific event known as Tulsa Race Riots that not only affected everyone in the time period, but will continue to affect us and live in our memory.
Despite the 14th and 15th constitutional amendments that guarantee citizenship and voting right regardless of race and religion, southern states, in practice, denied African Americans the right to vote by setting up literacy tests and charging a poll tax that was designed only to disqualify them as voters. In 1955, African Americans still had significantly less political power than their white counterparts. As a result, they were powerless to prevent the white from segregating all aspects of their lives and could not stop racial discrimination in public accommodations, education, and economic opportunities. Following the 1954 Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown vs. Board of Education that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional, it remained a hot issue in 1955. That year, however, it was the murder of the fourteen-year-old Emmett Louis Till that directed the nation’s attention to the racial discrimination in America.
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...
The most prominent demonstration of racism in America had to be the slave codes that were in place in all states where slavery was practiced. In “From Slavery to Freedom: A History of African Americans,” John Hope Franklin went into detail on slave codes on pages 137-138, “…these laws varied from state to state, but most of them expressed the same viewpoint: that slaves are not people but property and that laws should…protect whites.” One law stated that those enslaved could not bear arms or strike a white person, even in self-defense, but when a white person killed a slave it wasn’t even considered murder. Africans had no standing in court, they couldn’t testify or be a party to a lawsuit and their marriages were not legally binding. Raping an African American woman by her master wasn’t considered a crime either. The slave codes were designed to oppress, persecute, and humiliate blacks by the hands of the whites. With the slave codes and the eventual Jim Crow laws and any oppressive laws and segregation practiced in America, the idea of blacks being inferior was stamped into the minds of any person living in the country. African Americans were treated as subpar, they weren’t considered human beings and to this day the same belief is held unto, although not nearly as outright or not as blatant as in the past centuries. Slavery in itself is a large example of how racism is and may always be embedded into American society; blacks had to fight to even be considered citizens, be able to vote, and be given basic human rights. Though many would deny the existence of racism, the sad truth is that racism may be an ever-present concept in American society.
The world has lived through generations of racism and racial profiling. After the days of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Black Civil Rights Movement, the American people thought they had passed the days of hatred and discrimination. Although Americans think that they live in a non-racist society, minorities today still live in the chains of oppression and prejudice through sports, schools, and social media.