Emmett Till Murder Case Study

The murder of a young boy from the Southside of Chicago shocked the nation almost sixty years ago. Racist Jim Crow laws had led to him being lynched for a simple whistle. More recently, Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in 2012 by George Zimmerman for reasons that are hard to comprehend. Trayvon Martin is the not new Emmett Till due to the differences of the two cases and their outcomes. During August of 1955, Emmett Till traveled down to the Delta region of Mississippi. He was headed there to help his uncle pick cotton for the summer. One day after a long day of picking cotton in his uncle’s fields, he and his cousins went to the local grocery store in search for some midday snacks. After apparently purchasing some candy, he touched

George Zimmerman was a Community Watch volunteer and was on patrol that night. On his way back home, “[Trayvon] passed through a townhouse complex where he was an unfamiliar figure to George Zimmerman” (Mills). Zimmerman reportedly radioed police and was told to not follow Martin. After which he exited his vehicle to confront Trayvon. This somehow led to a fist fight between the two and Zimmerman eventually pulled a gun and fired two shots, killing

The media covered Emmett’s story extensively. Emmett’s murder showed a racism that ran very deep in the South and outlined what a terribly unjust state our society was in. Two men had brutally murdered a boy for literally just being a boy. White people in the South at this time felt that they were way better than blacks and took the law into their own hands at times. Emmett’s mother told his story on national television and exposed to the world what problems laid in the South which garnered sympathy from many who recognized the terrible reality. Trayvon’s murder was also covered by international media. Within hours there were pictures of an innocent looking, teenage boy running across TV screens. The media did not show the other side of Martin, the one that took pictures of himself showing vulgar hand gestures and abused marijuana. By not telling the entire story, millions immediately believed what they were told and hated