Emmett Till Research Paper

Did you know that unarmed black men are seven times more likely to die than white men? Racism is as old as human society itself. As long as human beings have been around, people have always seemed to have hated or feared people with a different skin color. Racism is just a part of the human nature. Trayvon Benjamin Martin was just 17 when he was shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, in Sanford, Florida on February 2012. The murder of Trayvon Martin affected many people. The death of Martin was just the first of several deaths where a white person killed a black innocent person. Since the deaths weren’t stopping the #BlackLivesMatter movement began.

On August 28, 1955, fourteen year old Emmett Till was beaten, tortured and shot. Then with barbed wire wrapped around his neck and tied to a large fan, his body was discarded into the Tallahatchi River. What was young Emmett’s offense that brought on this heinous reaction of two grown white men? When he went into a store to buy some bubble gum he allegedly whistled at a white female store clerk, who happened to be the store owner’s wife. That is the story of the end of Emmett Till’s life. Lynchings, beatings and cross-burning had been happening in the United States for years. But it was not until this young boy suffered an appalling murder in Mississippi that the eyes of a nation were irrevocably opened to the ongoing horrors of racism in

The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.

Roy Bryant and John Milam kidnapped and murdered Emmett Till in cold blood because he flirted with Bryant’s spouse 4 days earlier. The case being that Emmett Till was “brutally murdered for flirting with a white woman four days earlier” (“Aug 28, 1955: The Death of Emmett Till”) isn’t something you would hear much nowadays, but in 1955, it was unfortunately common. Curtis Jones watched Till flirt with Carolyn Bryant, the spouse of Rob Bryant. What started as a prank went terribly wrong. Not to mention that racism went into play, as Till, being a black kid trying to flirt with a white woman in the South, would never go freely.

After the emergence of this “new racism”, the lack of comfortability and control is displaying itself today in examples of racially motivated violence that mirror several racist events in pre-Civil Rights history. In August of 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old from Chicago who arrived in rural Mississippi to unknowingly change the dynamic of racism in America, at least he did then. The story goes that while he was in a store, he whistled at a white woman, the wife of storeowner Roy Bryant, who was not present. The woman, Carolyn Bryant, testified later under oath that Emmett asked her for a date, made crude gestures, and then some resulting in Emmett being chased out of the store. A few days later, Emmett was tracked down by Roy Bryant, was

In the article “Emmett Till” the story of 14- year old, Emmett Till’s unexpected murder is told. Emmett was a young boy from Chicago, who in August 1955 hopped onto a train with his uncle and cousin to visit their family in Money, Mississippi. On his third day in Mississippi, Till visited a local grocery store with a group of teenagers. Inside the store he bought bubblegum and was accused of either whistling at, flirting with, or touching the hand of the store’s clerk, Carolyn Bryant. The store’s clerk was a white woman who was married to the owner of the store, four days later her husband, Roy Bryant and his brother J.W. Milam kidnapped and murdered Emmett Till. A few days later, Till’s mutilated body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River and could only be recognized by his late father’s ring that was on his finger. The case was taken to court and the two men were not charged with any crimes. Till’s body was shipped to his mother in Chicago where she opted to have an open casket, and the story of what had happened brought outrage to the country.

On September 19, 1955 Emmett’s murder had became an outrage. Because blacks and women were not allowed to serve jury duty, Bryant and Milam were judged in front of an all white male jury. At the end of the case the two white men were found innocent. This really made a lot of chaos. To add to the madness, a couple months later they admitted the crime to Look magazine for four thousand dollars.

Emmett Till. Trayvon Martin. Eric Garner. Michael Brown. Tamir Rice. Rekia Boyd. Sandra Bland. What these people have in common is that they are all people of color [POC] who unjustly died at the hands of the American justice system. Jessica Hernandez. Ilan Nettles. Jonathan Snipes. Chelsea Manning. Matt Shepard. India Clark. Ajay Sathyan. These are LGBT+ individuals who have either faced extreme police brutality or have been attacked and/or murdered in a hate crime. POC and the LGBT+ community are two of most prominent minority groups who both endure persisting issues such as physical attacks by the police and the public, and immense injustice in the court system. However, the approach to LGBT+ issues and the approach to social justice issues regarding POC are often if not always dealt with separately by the public. This creates a large problem for LGBT+ POC.

Emmett Till was born and raised in Chicago, IL by his mother, Mamie. Emmett travelled by train to Money, Mississippi where he visited with relatives and worked on a cotton farm. Emmett and his cousin went into town one afternoon to take a break from the hot sun on the farm. Emmett entered the grocery store to buy candy where a Caucasian female was working behind the counter. The female was Carolyn Bryant, and her husband Roy owned the store. Carolyn told her husband that the day Emmett was in the store, he whistled at her which was inappropriate during this time. Once Roy was aware of what happened, he and another White man went to where Emmett was living and took him in the early morning. Emmett was then beaten and kept in a barn near Bryant’s

The documentary, narrative "The Lynching of Emmett Till" by Christopher Metress, tells Emmett's story of death through various points of view. On August 24, 1955, Emmett Till, a fourteen-year-old African American boy from Chicago, entered a rural grocery store of Money, Mississippi. Because the young child had been gloating about his bond with white people up north, his southern cousins had dared him to go into the store and say something to the women working the register. Emmett accepted their challenge; seconds later he was at the counter, set on purchasing two items. What he did or said next will never be known for sure, but whatever passed between these two strangers from two different worlds set off a chain reaction that would forever

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old African American boy who was brutally beaten and murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Emmett Till was from Chicago, Illinois and went to visit his uncle and cousin in Money, Mississippi(all). He had polio as a child which caused him to have a stutter. He lived in a working class neighborhood. Chicago was not so segregated. Money, Mississippi, however, was very segregated. He was killed by the woman;s husband and brother in-law. His friends dared him to ask the white woman out. She alleged that he made lewd advances and that he sauntered out of the store. Her husband and brother in-law gouged out his eye, shot him in the head, and tied him to a cotton gin fan. Emmett Till was a young teenager

On August 28th, 1955 in Money, Mississippi 14 year old Emmett Till was murdered by two white men, Roy Bryant and his brother in law J.W. Milam. Emmett was murdered for allegedly flirting with Roy Bryant’s one of the men’s wife. Without any hesitation the two men killed him.

Emmett Till was an 14 year old African- American boy who was brutally murdered for allegedly whistling at a white women. Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi, and went into a small store, but no really knows what happened. His friends may have dared him to ask her out. Carolyn said he wolf -whistled , but he had polio as a young child ,so he was taught to whistle before he’d say a hard word.His friends did hear him say ‘bye baby’ , Carolyn was insulted and told her husband. He was kidnapped, tortured, and killed by J.W. Miliam and Roy Bryant. They gouged out his eye ,threw him in the river, and they were not guilty of this crime. His body couldn’t be identified , tied his body to a cotton gin, and they kidnapped him. Emmett

In 1955 Emmett planned to visit family in Money, Mississippi (“The death of”, n.d.). The trip was scheduled for August 20th and Emmett was going to stay with his great uncle Moses Wright (“The death of”, n.d.). As J. Williams writes in a book about Emmett’s life, the day before Emmett left for his trip Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, gave him the ring from his father, inscribed with his father’s initials, L.T. (1987). After a day long train ride Emmett arrived in Mississippi and joined his great uncle and friends to begin his visit to the south. A few days after his arrival, Emmett went with friends to a local grocery store where they spent time relaxing after picking cotton during the day. To the disbelief of his friends, Emmett bragged that his girlfriend at home was a white girl. Emmett was a comical young man and a rambunctious teenager, who when dared

The South had many brutal beating and lynchings of African-Americans. One horrific event was Emmett Till. Emmett was a 14 year old African-American boy that was originally from Chicago, Illinois, but he was visiting family in Mississippi. He was in town with his cousins and they went into a drug store to get bubble gum. On their way out, Emmit “flirted” with the woman at the cash register by saying “Bye, baby.” The woman was extremely offended. Her husband was the owner of the store and he was on a business trip, when he returned home the woman told him about what had happened and he was furious. On the night of August 28, 1955, in the middle of the night, the man got the woman’s brother and they went to Emmett’s Great Uncle Mose Wright’s house where Emmett was staying. They forced Emmett into the car and drove him to the Tallahatchie River. The men forced him to carry a 75 pound cotton-gin fan to the river bank. Emmett was forced to remove his clothes and the men beat him nearly to death. They brutally gouged out Emmett’s eye and shot him in the head. The cotton-gin fan was tied to the body and then thrown into the river. The body was found and recovered three days later on August 31, the body looked almost inhuman. The only way the body was identified as Emmett Till, was a ring that had been pasted down through the family that Emmett always worn. Till’s mother Mamie Bradley