Emmett Till Thesis

After the brutal lynching of Emmett Till, a fourteen year old African American boy, America watched as a broken, beaten body cried and said “No more!” to the faces of racism and discrimination and to his transgressors, who were unjustly freed. Visiting Mississippi from Chicago, young Emmett Till was upbeat, humorous, and a little daring but unfamiliar with the grimy workings of the South (Callard). Thus, he didn’t realize the consequences of being himself around white people: he did not know why he shouldn’t whistle at that white women. He did not know that only a few hours later he would lie beaten and dead, with his eyes gouged out, tied to a cotton-gin fan, floating through the Tallahatchie River (History.com Staff; Baldwin). He did not

know his murderers would walk free. But America did. His unjustified murder was a call to action for all, and, suddenly, there were “whites…Jews, Italians, Irishmen, jumping in the fight, saying that racism was wrong” (Callard).

In fact, Till had such an effect on the American people that an entire generation was named after him. The Emmett Till Generation, coined by Joyce Ladner, describes the baby boomers that were inspired by Till’s murder to join the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement, which appealed to a sense of ethical righteousness of many people. These children, both black and white, would later grow up to be the next activists, making sure that a boy like Till would never be murdered in cold blood again (“The Murder of Emmett Till”). But Emmett Till was not the only rallying factor of the Civil Rights Movement. There was MLK whose passionate speeches and peaceful protests brought thousands into the fight, as well as A. Phillip Randolph whose threat to Washington brought in the mandate for fair employment, and also the plethora of court cases which slowly desegregated America into what it is today (Baldwin). These converging factors engendered the overall success of the Civil Rights Movement because orthodoxical change is not brought about by large changes but rather small individual changes that culminate into a larger orthodoxical

shift. This statement is supported by Mamie Bradley, the mother of Emmett Till, when she said, “We are very small as individuals. But together we can’t be beat. If we stand up and unite ourselves together for a common cause, there is nothing that can stand before us.” However, the Civil Rights Movement did not succeed because of these small individual changes alone; ultimately, it succeeded because of the perseverance of both the small individual changes and the individuals themselves. It was a persistent, everlasting fire, kindled in the souls of millions of people, and it would not stop radiating its light, heat, and hope until all was lost or all was gained.