How Did Emmett Louis Till Contribute To The Civil Rights Movement?

1. Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941 in Chicago Illinois. He was the only child born to Mamie Till and Louis Till, a private in the United States Army during World War II. The infamous murder of the fourteen year old stimulated the emerging of the Civil Rights Movement. August 19, 1955- the day before Emmett left for Mississippi to visit some relatives, his mother gave him his late father’s signet ring that had his initials “L.T.” engraved in it. Emmett and his friends visited the grocery store to purchase some bubble gum where Till reportedly flirted with a white cashier. Four days after, two white men kidnapped him, beat him, shot him in the head, tied him with barbed wire to a large metal fan, and dragged him into the bank of the

After enduring centuries of slavery, African Americans began a movement that spanned the 1920’s into the mid-1930s. The Harlem Renaissance was the literacy, intellectual, and artistic movement that kindled a new African American cultural identity. Writers and actors such as the most prolific, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Jean Toomer casted off of the influences of white poets, jazz, short stories and poems to move the black culture by urging African Americans to stand up for their rights in their powerful arts.

6. “The Tuskegee Machine” was a secretive system of patronage designed to promote political and social programs for African Americans. This popular euphemism used in the twentieth century was referring to the financial control exerted over black education. The term was originally started by W.E.B. Du Bois, was discussed over black newspapers and periodicals by Booker T. Washington- who was born a slave but became educated and founded a college at Tuskegee in Alabama.

7. Homophobia is described as “the hatred or fear of homosexuals.” Discrimination against homosexuals comes in many forms and are aimed at lesbians, and gay men. This crime is of the most dangerous when it serves as the justification for violent action against homosexuals. Organized hate groups have viciously attacked homosexuals and have used especially violent language with intentions of intimidating them at work, schools, and at clubs in many other areas as

Founded by Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and others, the epitome of the Black Power Movement was the Black Panther Party. This party justified the use pf violence in the accomplishments of black justice. This movement galvanized a number of other blacks to speak out.

13. The emergence of the SCLC- Southern Christian Leadership Conference, can be traced back to as early the Montgomery Bus Boycott that began on December 5, 1955 after Rosa Parks was arrested. In the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr., the Southern Christian Leadership Conference is renewing its commitment to bring the promise of ‘one nation, under God, INDIVISIBLE’. The objective of the organization is to promote spiritual principles.

14. Dr. Molefi Kete Asante has been recognized as one of the then most widely cited African Americans. Originally born Arthur Lee Smith Jr., was born August 14, 1942 in Valdosta, Georgia. In 1987, Asante made academic history by establishing the first Ph.D. program in African-American studies at Temple University in Philadelphia,