Emmett Till Thesis

On the morning of August 28th, 1955, the mutilated corpse of teenager Emmett Till was thrown into the Tallahatchie River, after savagely being abducted, tortured, beat, and shot in the head. His murder was because of an accusation that he whistled at a white woman, Carolyn Bryant. She later told her husband and brother-in-law of the incident, which led to their criminal acts. They kidnapped Till and forced him into the back of their car, and dragged him to the Tallahatchie River. They didn’t intend on killing him but decided to do so when Till didn’t suffer while being tortured like they wanted him to. Till’s body was recovered from the water days later and his case brought to trial, but neither of his killers ever spent time behind bars.

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His death motivated people to seek change, even those who weren’t sure if they should: “No one would have believed it. And when they saw what happened, this motivated a lot of people that were standing, what we call “on the fence,” against racism. It encouraged them to get in the fight and do something about it. That’s why many say that that was the beginning of the civil rights era. From experience, you can add, what they mean by that is we was always as a people, African Americans, was fighting for our civil rights, but now we had the whole nation behind us. We had whites, we had Jews, Italians, Irishmen jumping in the fight, saying that racism was wrong,” (Callard 1). Once people saw what happened to Emmett Till and his unfair trial, the Civil Rights movement began sweeping the nation. Till’s cruel death sparked a desire for change, encouraged people to rise in the face of adversity, and no longer ignore injustice or inequality. The reason that Till’s death sparked a movement for change was because of how unfair it all was; he was killed for whistling, and the murderers were never convicted: “If the jury’s verdict had come in guilty, Emmett would have been forgotten about. But [Emmett’s story] shows people that if we allow lawlessness to go on, if we do nothing to punish those who break the law, then

Despite the horrors of the crime, it made a segregated nation come together and rally for the rights of every colored man, woman, and child. The murder brought attention to hate crimes, which were so often ignored-until it happened to a 14 year-old child. While people took notice of the brutality of hate, the death also brought attention to the less gruesome but cruel parts of society: Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws segregated blacks from whites and forced people to use public facilities based on the color of their skin. As people began to recognize the injustices of society, the Civil Rights Movement launched, finally changing American government and society. Even though Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. did the heavy-lifting of the Civil Rights Movement, our country should never forget the mangled body of a boy shipped to his mother in a box, all because he whistled at a white