How Did The Vietnam War Affect The Civil Rights Movement

489 Words2 Pages

The Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement During the 1950s through the 1970s, The United States entered troubling and controversial times. On 1954, American witnessed the official starts of the Civil Rights Movement, “… a movement in the United States during the 1950s and 1960s aimed at abolishing racial discrimination and improving the civil rights of African Americans” (“Civil Rights Movement”). Soon after the commencement of the Civil Rights Era, The United Sates became involved with The Vietnam War, “A war between Communist North Vietnam and US-backed South Vietnam” (“Vietnam War”). Although both of these events had many significant happenings, the murder of Emmett Till should be considered the most important occurrence of the Civil Rights Movement while The Paris Accords of 1973 equally as important to the Vietnam War. …show more content…

It was reported that, on August 28 of 1955, the men “…eat him nearly to death, gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and then threw his body, tied to the cotton-gin fan with barbed wire, into the river” (History.com Staff). What made this incident so horrid was the fact that Till simply made a flirty comment towards the woman, but she proceeded to tell the two men that killed Till that he lustfully touched her. Therefore, Emmett Till’s death was caused by the exaggerated story that the woman created. After the news of the boy’s death spread, his mother decided to hold an open-casket funeral to inform the world of the horrible way that the men disfigured her son. After Emmett’s killers went to trial and were set free, numerous people around the nation were infuriated with the result. This awful incident greatly called attention to the unjust features of the Jim Craw laws and became one of the most significant original sources of the Civil Rights