Emmett Louis Till Thesis

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Emmett Louis Till was born July 25, 1941, in Chicago Illinois. He was born to working-class parents on the South Side of Chicago. At 14 years old, Till went on a trip to rural Mississippi to spend the summer with relatives. Till was known by his mother, Mamie Till, to be a jokester, but she warned him that white people in the South could react violently to behaviors that were tolerated in the North. On August 21, 1955, Till arrived in Money, Mississippi, and stayed with his great-uncle, Moses Wright, who was a sharecropper. On August 24, Till and a group of other teenagers went to a local grocery store, and accounts of what happened after vary. Some witnesses said that one of the other boys dared Till to talk to the store’s cashier, Carolyn …show more content…

His murder became a rallying point for the civil rights movement. The trial of Till’s murderers began on September 19, 1955. From the witness stand Wright identified the men who had kidnapped Till. After four days of testimony, and a little over an hour of deliberation, an all-white, all-male, jury acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Protected from further prosecution by double jeopardy, they later admitted to the murder. Mamie Till dedicated the rest of her life to promoting civil rights and trying to bring some measure of justice for her son. Till’s murder is utterly horrendous, and the people responsible deserve to pay for their crimes. Rosa Parks went to a rally at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church to hear Dr. T.R.M. Howard, who was the lead organizer in Emmet Till’s case, speak about him. Years later when she was later asked why she refused to go to the back of the bus, she said “I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.” The murder of Emmett Till was a spark in the rise of activism and resistance that became known as the Civil Rights movement. His murder pushed many who had been on the side directly into the

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