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Emmet Till Research Paper

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Emmet Till For my research topic, I decided to focus on Emmet Till, whose murder was a catalyst for the Civil Rights Movement. Born in 1941 on the 25th of July, to working class parents in Chicago, Louis Till and Mamie Till. Emmett lived in Chicago with his mother, Mamie Till. Mamie was very protective of Emmett. Especially due to racial conflict in Chicago. Mamie was originally born in Mississippi. She wanted to leave the south because of the Jim Crow laws which caused segregation between Black and White people having separate facilities in all areas of life. Her family became part of the great migration north. She met Louis Till at age 18 and she gave birth to Emmett in 1941. After divorcing Louis, Mamie settled with her son in a middle-class …show more content…

On August 24, after a day working in the cotton fields, Emmett went to the grocery store with his cousins. According to witnesses, Emmett was dared to talk to Carolyn Bryant, wife of Roy Bryant, who was working in the shop that day. Witnesses say that Emmett whistled at Carolyn; however, some say he grabbed her hand or waist or flirted with her. It is not clear exactly what transpired in the grocery store; however, Carolyn left the store to get the gun in her pickup truck. Emmett and his cousins fled …show more content…

Moses Wright, Emmett Tills Great Uncle, was in the witness stand in front of an all-white jury and identified J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant and Emmett's kidnappers. This was the first time a black man stood against a white man in court due to widespread fear in the south of black people speaking against white people. Several black residents testified against Bryant and Milam. Carolyn Bryant testified as well. She described that a black man had assaulted her by touching her hand and whistling at her, but she never mentioned Emmett Till by name. Defence lawyers called the motive for the murder “illogical” although there were many similar cases of this happening in the south, with other members of the African American community being accused of sexual assault with little or no evidence to support it. The prosecution and defence lawyers both appealed to the white jurors who committed to racial hierarchy. Defence lawyer John Whitten accused civil rights activists of placing Emmett’s body in the Tallahatchie River to challenge the “Southern way of life.” District attorney Gerald Chatham claimed that Emmett deserved punishment for “insulting white womanhood.” But Bryant should have instead beat him with a razor

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Emmett Till was born July 25, 1941 in Chicago, Illinois and was killed August 28, 1955 in Money, Mississippi at the age of 14. He suffered serious consequences for telling a white woman, Carolyn Bryant, “Bye Baby” leaving out of a local corner store. Several days later Emmett was taken from his home by Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam, they beat and mutilated him before shooting him and sinking his body in the Tallahatchie River. Till’s body was

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A couple of days later, twenty-four year old Roy Bryant arrived back to his wife Carolyn. When he found out what happened, he was furious. His half brother J.W. Milam joined him and that night they drove to Emmett’s house. When Emmett’s uncle heard the knock on the door, he knew what was going to happen. Roy Bryant asked to see Emmett, took him into their car, drove off, and took him to a shed on a plantation.

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Milam and Roy Bryant due to the fact that the gun used to kill him, matches the description of the gun owned by the Milams. On August 24, Emmett Till and his friends came to a store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett was dared to “score” a 21 year old store manager named Carolyn Bryant. When Carolyn refused to do anything with him, he sexually harassed her. Due to fear of abuse, Carolyn told the jury that she took out a gun from her sister-in-law, Juanita Milam’s car.

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Carolyn Bryant had accused Emmett Till a black, 14 year old boy from Chicago, of assaulting her. During the time of Emmett Till’s death many southern white men and women felt that Till had deserved his death because he was a black northern boy who shouldn’t have put his hands on a white women or whistle at her. But to African Americans, Emmitt Till’s death was unjust and triggered the Civil Rights Movement, Because of Emmett Till’s death and his mother Mammie Till’s courage to show his disfigured face in an open casket open to the world, Emmett Till was known known all around the world which showed how bad southern racism was. Even though there was no questioning who killed Emmett Till a white jury acquitted Roy and Milam

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Emmett Till was a loving, fun fourteen year old boy who grew up on the Southside of Chicago. During 1955, classrooms were segregated yet Till found a way to cope with the changes that was happening in the world. Looking forward to a visit with his cousins, Emmett was ecstatic and was not prepared for the level of segregation that would occur in Money, Mississippi when he arrived. Emmett was a big prankster, but his mother reminded him of his race and the differences that it caused. When Till arrived in Money, he joined in with his family and visited a local neighborhood store for a quick beverage.

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His mother held an open casket funeral because she wanted to show the world how brutal his death was. On August 24, 1955, Emmett was going to visit family down in Mississippi with his uncle. His mother warned

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Emmett Louis Till was a fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago. In August 1955 white women falsely claimed that Emmett till cat whistled at her in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till did not know that he had broken the unwritten Jim Crow laws. Three days later, Emmett Till was pulled out of his bed in the middle of the night and was beaten and shot by two white men. Due to the gruesomeness of Emmett Till's murder and the way he was killed his mother demanded an open burial and an open casket.

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Emmett's murder was published in magazines, newspaper and across the U.S., and the state of Mississippi was frowned on because of the lack of black civil

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Although there are doubts about who was involved in Emmett Till’s death, the only perpetrators that were tried in court were Roy Bryant, and J.W Milam (Anderson). August 28, 1955 was the day Till was kidnapped and murdered (Emmett Till Biography). Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam went in Mose Wright`s house and demanded the Chicago nigger (Linder).Till was wake up out of his sleep to be dragged to the back of a pickup truck (Linder). He was shot in the right ear, beat with a 45. Colt, and had a gin fan wrapped around his neck with barbed wire (Huie).

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Emmett Till, a young black boy of Mississippi, was murdered by Roy Bryant and John W. Milam in August of 1955. The notorious case drew in a crowd of more than a thousand people, all attentive to the decision on whether or not to indict the accused men. However, by the ruling of an all-white-man jury, Bryant and Milam were acquitted on all charges. This decision sparked a national outcry from the African American population, and ultimately fueled the flames to Black Civil Rights in the South. Despite racial barriers established in America, Bryant, Milam, and the town of Sumner, Mississippi recognized the extinguished life of a human being, not just a negro boy, evidenced through the website famous murder trials by Douglas O. Linder.

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Emmett was left mutilated and horrendous looking for all of the world to see when his mother decided to have an open-coffin funeral. News of Emmett’s story spread through the nation like a forest fire, outraging and devastating people all over, saying how brutal the murder was, or how it wasn’t brutal enough. Emmett’s trial took place less than 2 weeks after he’d been killed, and somehow his trial was more unfair than his death. During trial, Mr. Breland harassed Till’s Uncle Mose, “And yet you could see clearly, clearly enough to accuse to white men of murder, to claim that the men on your porch were Mr. Bryant and Mr. Milam over there… No problem with white folks, yet there you sit accusing two of our upstanding white citizens of barging into your home in the middle of the night, pointing a gun and a flashlight in your face, and hauling off your nephew”(170/171). Even though Bryant and Milam both admitted to kidnapping Emmett, the possibility of the two men not even being there to take Emmett is beyond irrational, even when both men stated their names at Moses 's door.

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