Essay On Emmett Till Trial

Emmett Till’s trial started an uproar in America over racial discrimination. It was not apparent to everyone that discrimination was such a big issue until the funeral of Emmett Till. His mother chose to have an open casket funeral, to show that something needed to be done about the brutal killing of her son. People were astonished about the murder. Resources used in this paper comes from the interviews that were taken from people on each side of this case, documents from the trial, and stories that were written by people who witnessed the event or participated in it. Part it is from what I learned in school from my teachers throughout the years. Based on the reports that were made, in 1955 whites were defended with more ease because they

Bryant and Milam, Carolyn’s husband and his friend, worked together to kidnap Emmett. During the kidnapping, Mose Wright, Emmett’s uncle, was threatened by the two men. They said if Mose knew who they were he wouldn’t get to see the age of 65. (Transcript- Emmett Till Trial, Mose Wright). When they came up to a farm near Drew, Mississippi, the two men and several others took Till into the barn for good pistol whipping. During this, Till told them he had dated white women before in Chicago. Upon hearing this, the men decided to take and kill him somewhere else. Mr. Bryant and Milam drove over to the Progressive Ginning Company near Boyle, Mississippi, and retrieved a fan to use as a weight. When they reached the Tallahatchie River Bridge, they ordered Till to strip off his clothes. After Till was done taking off his clothes, the men shot him in the head. They then tied the fan to his neck using barbed wire and threw him into the river. The next afternoon, Mr. Bryant and Milam were arrested after Mose Wright, the owner of the house that Emmett was abducted from, called the sheriff to explain what had happened the night

Emmett Till claimed he had dated white girls in Chicago, and whether or not his claim was true, it still proves the point that relations between whites and blacks were different in the North. Consequently, Emmett Till thought it was okay to interact with whites in the South the way he usually did. He didn’t know any different, but unfortunately, he found out the hard way. Emmett didn’t listen to his mother after she had told him “Adapt yourself to a new way of life and be very careful of you speak to and remember to say yes sir and yes ma’am.” ( Transcript of Emmett Till, Mamie Bradley). When he tried to date a girl in the South, he didn’t know that was something blacks could not to do until his cousins came into the store and told him. Just like him and his cousins did the day at the store, blacks came together at the time to defend each other when rebellions broke out. The people in the north came together for the purpose of the nation. They knew that fighting between the two races wouldn’t help any in war, and winning was the main focus when going to war. They knew at one point they would have to come together as a whole to defeat the other countries that were after the United States. This is why the northerners were so disgusted with what happened in the South. They thought everything was resolved between the two races; however, after seeing the results of Emmett’s trial, nothing was resolved in the