As a class requirement, we were obligated to watch a documentary about Emmett Till. The documentary, titled “The Murder of Emmett Till” was a tell-all about a tragic story of a fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago. Emmett Till was sent to Money, Mississippi to spend the summer with some relatives. In the 1950s, life in Chicago was different than life in Mississippi. Racism was stronger in the south than in the north and Emmett Till was walking into an environment he had never encountered before.
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was murdered in cold blood on August 28, 1955, after he was accused of flirting with a white married proprietor of a small grocery store. What Till was accused of violating the code of conduct for an African American male in the south. After the event Roy Bryant, husband of the woman from the grocery store, and J.W. Milam, his half-brother, kidnapped Emmett Till from his home. The fourteen-year-old was beaten, maimed, and shot him in the head before drowning his body in the nearby river. It was three days before Till’s body was discovered in the river. When his mother Mamie received his body back in Chicago, she decided to have an open casket. The reasoning for the open casket being so the world can see just how cruel racism is. A fourteen-year-old boy was lynched and justice needed to be served. However, when the trial came, Milam and Bryan were acquitted by an
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After examining the Emmett Till story further and comparing it to what is in society today, our professor is right. It is time for a change to be made and it starts with us. Innocent men and women should not be losing their lives because of their skin color. The world needs to learn from stories like Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin and countless other tragedies because it is preposterous that people are still fearing for their