Imagine that it’s summertime, year 1955 in Chicago. You are 14 years old and your uncle wants you to ride on a train with him and your cousins down south, Mississippi to be exact, because he has been asked to conduct a funeral. You are excited, not because of the funeral, but because you get to ride on a train with your family to a state you have never seen before. The very thought of spending any part of your summer in a new place, should not only excite you, your mind should be racing with anticipated joy of seeing a new place, meeting new people and experiencing new things. Towards the end of your trip, you should be anxious to return home, knowing that you will have lots of fun stories to tell your family and friends. I can imagine …show more content…
His body was discovered by a teenager. Robert Hodges was walking along the riverbank that early morning and saw the knees and feet of a dead body, later known to be that of Emmett Till. His corpse was bloated and badly disfigured. Roy Bryant and J.W .Milan were arrested for the kidnapping and murder of Emmett Till. When Emmett Till’s body was sent back to Chicago in a sealed box, his mother Mamie demanded that the box be opened and she decided to have an open casket funeral for all to see. The very viewing of his body went on for several days and was seen by tens of thousands of people. The entire nation was in shock of what they saw. Jet magazine had taken pictures of Emmett Till’s body at the request of his mother and when the pictures were published, the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers was both national and international news. Both men were put on trial and acquitted of all charges by an all white jury who deliberated for about an hour. Months later, after both men felt comfortable that they could not be retried for the same crime, they both confessed in a story sold to Look magazine. The lynching of Emmett Till helped to inspire and start the black freedom movement in the 1950’s and 1960’s …show more content…
The original casket of Emmett Louis Till resides in the African American Museum .
Bibliography
Primary Source
Tyson, Timothy B. The Blood of Emmett Till. London: Simon & Schuster, 2017.
Secondary Source
Metrese, Christopher. “The Lynching of Emmett Till” last modified date June 28, 2016, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780190280024/obo-9780190280024-0028.xml
Articles
In Richard Perez-Pena’s, “Woman Linked to 1955 Emmett Till Murder Tells Historian Her Claims Were False”, from the JAN 27, 2017 Article
In Krissah Thompson’s, “Painful but crucial: Why you’ll see Emmett Till’s casket at the African American museum,” from the August 18, 2016 Article
Metress, Christopher. ""No Justice, No Peace": The Figure of Emmett Till in African American Literature." MELUS 28, no. 1 (2003): 87-103. doi:10.2307/3595247.
Websites www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo https://www.nytimes.com/2017/us/emmett-till-lynching-carolyn-bryant-don