14 year old Emmett Till was going to see relatives in Money Mississippi, on August 24th 1955 when he allegedly flirted with a white cashier at a grocery store. 4 days later, two white men beat, caused major injury, and shot him in the head. The men were adjudicated for murder, but an all-white, male jury cleared them of any wrong doing. Till's murder and the open casket funeral spurred the developing Civil Rights Movement. Source 1 is a picture that emerged in many news articles in America which raised questions among the community. By 1955, African Americans across the country, as well as in the isolated South, had begun the struggle for justice and fairness. Emmett Till's murder was a catalyst in the expansion of activism and resistance that had become known as the civil rights movement. The sight of his abused body pushed many who had been gratified to stay on the outskirts straight into the fight. …show more content…
An NAACP field worker, the Reverend George Lee, was shot and murdered at point blank range while driving in his car after attempting to vote in Belzoni. A few weeks later in Brookhaven, Lamar Smith was shot and murdered, ahead of the county courthouse in broad daylight and before witnesses, after casting his vote. Both were active in black voter registering ambitions. No one was detained in association with either murder. This incident wasn’t the first but it was one of the most well known as the image of the brutalized face of Emmett Till was publicised. (As seen in Source 1) Emmett Till's death had a influential effect on Mississippi civil rights campaigners. Medgar Evers, then an NAACP field officer in Jackson, Mississippi, advised the NAACP national leadership to take action, and along with NAACP field workers Ruby Hurley and Amzie Moore, led a stealthy search for black onlookers willing to take the risk to present