Diego Balestrini
Mrs. Alonso
ENG 1310
27/3/2023
Emmett Till
A 14-year-old Black boy’s trip to a rural town in Mississippi would end up changing his life, history, and the civil rights movement because of one conversation he had with a white woman at a shop. Till's death had a national impact and brought attention to the systemic racism and violence that Black Americans faced in the South. Emmett Till’s short life was very impactful because of his publicized death, importance to the civil rights movement, and his legacy as a victim of racism.
Emmett Till was killed in Money, Mississippi, in 1955 by two white men. After rumors spread that Till had flirted with a white woman at a grocery store, he was taken hostage, brutally beaten, shot in the
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Roy Bryant and his half brother J.W. Milam kidnapped, beat, tied to a cotton gin with barbed wire, and shot Till in the head before dropping him into the Tallahatchie River. His mother displayed Till’s body in an open-casket funeral in Chicago, and showed the effect of hate crimes on Blacks in the South. The murderers were arrested, but walked free and were acquitted even though they were clearly guilty. (“Emmett Till”). The author of Source #2 says, “His mother, Mamie Till Mobley, was born in Mississippi. She was wary of allowing her son to travel to the area and warned him of potential dangers, admonishing him to steer clear of white people.” After his death, Mamie Till Mobley displayed her son’s body to show the world the vile, hateful acts that racists in the South were capable of. After slightly more than an hour of deliberation, an all-white male jury acquitted J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant of the murder of Emmett Till (“A Hate Crime”). In the courtroom, white people showed up in nice clothes with their children and picnic baskets, while the killers were praised. According to the text, “African Americans in attendance were, however, much more somber and even fearful as they huddled at the back of the courtroom.” Emmett Till’s murderers ended up being acquitted, with Carolyn Bryant testifying, by a jury composed of white males, and left the courtroom as celebrities. (“The Murder of Emmett