The Lynching Of Jude Benson Study Guide

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.

After the ballistics team had come to the conclusion that the gun was probably shot from four blocks away, Detective Healey and Doug Boyle start to go on an investigation. They had went door-to-door to question others to see if they knew anything about Charlie Ward’s death. When the police stopped at Michael’s house, they had asked the McKenzie family if they owned any firearms. Michael’s dad responded with a yes and was asked if he can show them. Michael then responded that he did not currently have his Winchester and said that his friend, Joe, borrowed it. A few days later, Doug Boyle and Detective Healey came back to Michael’s house with metal detectors to search the backyard for any evidence. While searching, Doug Boyle finds an empty casing

First, ask yourself how would you feel after hearing the news that one of your family members had been lynched? Throughout the chapters 1-8, we can experience and observe the disheartening history of violence and lies. It is additionally an irritating depiction of a partitioned country on the very edge of the social equality development and an eerie contemplation on race, history, and the battle for truth. Throughout history, the conditions of the lynching, how it affected the legislators of the day, quickened the social equality development and keeps on shadowing the Georgia people group where these homicides occurred. During the 1900s until 19600s various African-Americans experienced various harsh conditions of violence, never being granted the right to vote and being segregated from whites based on their race and skin-color from their white masters. In general racism between whites and blacks can be seen throughout the globe during the era of slavery

The reading begins off with describing a mother, Dinah Kirkland and her traumatic experience with the concept of lynching. During the early 1930’s her son went missing after he was arrested and although Dinah knew that her son had been the product of a lynching, she could do nothing about it. She did not know where he was kept, who killed him, or even why he was killed. She contacted the head of the NAACP, and told him the fear she had regarding her son. Members of the African- American society came together to help Kirkland with her efforts, and eventually, Dinah did find the remains of her eighteen-year-old son.

‘Fire in a canebrake’ is quite a scorcher by Laura Wexler and which focuses on the last mass lynching which occurred in the American Deep South, the one in the heartland of rural Georgia, precisely Walton County, Georgia on 25th July, 1946, less than a year after the Second World War. Wexler narrates the story of the four black sharecroppers who met their end ‘at the hand of person’s unknown’ when an undisclosed number of white men simply shot the blacks to death. The author concentrates on the way the evidence was collected in those eerie post war times and how the FBI was actually involved in the case, but how nothing came of their extensive investigations.

The Blood of Emmett Till is a novel written by Timothy B. Tyson. The novel is based on true events during 1955 targeting issues like racism, injustice, and destruction of innocence. The story is about a 14 year old boy name Emmett Till, who was accuse of sexaul assuliting a girl name Carolyn Bryant. However, Emmett didn’t assault her, but because he is black, and she was white, her husband and step brother kidnap Emmett and shot him and left his dead body in a river. The book continues when the husband and the step brother was in trial and found not guilty, due to the fact that the jury is white. The book concludes when during Carolyn testimony, she tells the truth about Emmett, and the husband and step brother was found guilty, but they commited suicide. Carolyn was influenced by race.

Emmett Till was a fourteen year old boy who was beaten and murdered for allegedly whistling at a white woman. Emmett Till was visiting relatives in Money, Mississippi and went into a small store, but no one really knows what happened. His friends said that they heard him whistle at the white woman but he had a stutter as a young boy and his family taught him to whistle before he was about to say a hard word, some may say that he was whistling because of his stutter but others do not think that he was whistling because of his stutter. Emmett Till was then brutally beaten and murdered. They would not have been able to identify his body but he had a ring on that had given to him just a while before. Emmett Till may have been punished for a

The main theme of the book was racial tension. The white folks treated the black folks like they were dirt. Even older white folks treated the younger black children like dirt. I do not understand how any adult could hit a child, especially because of their color. One instance that really bothered me was when a white man almost raped Melba because she was black. It was in 1954, immediately after Brown vs. the Board of Education decision had came down. After that she said she was going to read the newspaper because she wanted to know when white men got angry. And sometimes she had to spend her own nickel for it. Another theme throughout the book could be determination. The nine children were determined to carry out integration. They did not give up. Some older black folks in the neighborhood faulted the nine children for the actual attempt of integration. They claimed that it made it harder than it already was to be black and living in Little Rock. For example, Melba’s neighbor Mrs. Floyd said to her after the first day at Central, “ Now You’ve had your lesson. You don’t have to go back to that awful school anymore.” Not only were they catching hell from the whites, they were catching just as much from the blacks as well. After the first day in the school being taunted and mistreated they could have not gone back. They put up a fight, as far as integration goes- they would not take no for an

The book "The Jefferson County Egan Murders" is about the three Egan's who were murdered on New Year's Eve in 1964. Barbara (age 24), Peter (age 27), and Gerald (age 19, and younger brother of Peter) Egan were criminals. All of Jefferson County knew about them. The Egan's were burglars. They were well known to the police, especially in Watertown. At this time, they were under investigation for a string of burglaries. The police knew it was them, but knowing is not proving. Peter was wanted for 13 car theft investigations. His license was suspended when he and Barbara got into a high speed chase with police. Peter and Barbara switched spots, so she was driving, so Peter would not get charged with driving without a license. This was a well-known

The argument that the author is trying to prove is that there has been numerous of lynching events in America but it has progressed into different levels over the years to prevent African- Americans from getting a voice in America’s society. Such as, using lynching as punishment for people’s actions that were not accepted to the public community, a source of intimidation and protection of white women. Majority of white men and women tried every way to keep African- Americans at the bottom of society. Like, when blacks were free from slavery however were still not able to participate in politics, go to the best schools and were only able to work for the low paying jobs. Blacks

The main plot of this book is the murder of Emmett Till, but it also covers the idea of people expressing their own believes. For example, Harlan was not afraid to speak his thoughts of equality to his father. He strongly believed the mistreating to African Americans in the south was not right. He did not care if it ruined his relationship between his father, because he knew the South’s believes were incorrect. Mr. Paul is another character in the story that expresses is own believes. When Hiram asks Mr. Paul for his advice if he was in his situation he tells Hiram, “If I knew something that proved those two didn’t kill that boy, I’d feel obliged to testify, and if I had something that would convict’em, well, I’d have to plan on closing my shop and heading somewhere far away from Mississippi. But I’d speak up.”(Crowe, p.151) This shows that Mr. Paul knows that the right thing to do is to testify the truth and even though you will risk your life the moral thing is to still speak the truth.

During the latter 19th and early 20th centuries racism and racial segregation were considerable problems. Mob violence, including lynchings were responsible for the deaths of thousands of black men, women and children, often for crimes they had no part in or which were not even committed. Ida B. Wells-Barnett was born into slavery by James and Elizabeth Wells during the Civil War. She attended Rust College, which was partly founded by her father in Mississippi. After Wells’ parents died of yellow fever, she attained a teaching position at a local school by lying about her age. After some time teaching she moved to Memphis with two of her sisters, where she acquired another teaching position and continued her schooling at Fisk University. While her professional life was moderately successful, her personal life was dismal, however, “it is the very qualities that problematize her personal relationships… that will impel her to undertake… a courageous crusade against lynching” (DeCosta-Willis). Being a freed black woman in the south, Wells had firsthand knowledge of the segregation and racial tension of the time. This knowledge and her experiences gave her insights about the South that were crucial in her successful crusade against lynching and segregation.

She remembers small details like how her friend only had black dolls to play with. She didn’t realize this at the time because she was so young, but she thinks that the reason why her friend’s parents weren’t too fond of her wasn’t necessarily because she was white, but because they were probably afraid of what would happen to them for associating with a white person, or if something bad had happened to her while under her supervision. Like in Mosaic, Ida B Wells discusses some of the reasons why black people were lynched. A lot of those reasons included being falsely accused of committing acts against a white person. Even if the black person did nothing and just happened to be there at the scene, they were almost always punished for it. For example, when white landowner’s wives would get pregnant and the baby ended up being of mixed race, even if it was never the black worker’s fault, they were blamed for it. This is why a lot of the times many African Americans fled from where they worked and were never to be seen again. “The daily papers last year reported a farmer’s wife in Alabama had given birth to a Negro child. When the Negro farm hand who was plowing in the field heard it he took the mule from the plow and fled… In Natchez, Mississippi, Mrs. Marshall,... [gave birth to a child who was] unmistakably dark. All were alarmed, and ‘rush of blood, strangulation’ were the conjectures, but the doctor, when asked the cause, grimly told them it was

When hate is engraved in someone’s heart they start to do things they don’t want to do, but what is driving them is forcing them to. This is the case of Guitar Baines, Milkman’s best friend, is very conscious of where he stands in society and what people of another race see him as. Guitar is hate driven and sees white people as his ultimate enemy. The novel starts off has Robert Smith jumping off the roof of a hospital. Smith was part of a group named The Seven Days. This organization is a group of African Americans who kill white people. If a black male or female were to be killed by the hands of a white person then the Seven Days would be in charge of a killing a white person the exact same way. Only seven members are allowed to be apart of this group. After Smith died, this organization needed a new member and this new member was Guitar. Milkman did

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