The Terrible Murder of Emmet Till and the Civil Rights Movement

We all know about slavery, it lasted roughly from 1619-1865(Slavery in America n.pag.).What we don’t all know is what African Americans had to go through. We never will be able to understand. The story of Emmett Till gives us a glance on how horribly people were treated. Emmett Till symbolizes the horror of racism and how badly it needed to be stopped. In total 3,345 lynchings that happened throughout this time period(Lynching Statistics n.pag.). He started a mass movement for the fight of equality. It isn’t known what happened in the grocery store the day Emmett suppositivly flirted with the cashier. It could have been one word, wink, whistle, that caused his brutal murder. Due to where Emmett lived he didn’t understand that racism was worse in the South. His ignorance about that caused a mass movement for freedom, and change how the world is today. In order to understand this event, it’s important to look at the context in which it took place. Emmett Louis Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the only child of Louis and Mamie Till(Emmett Till Biography n. pag.). He never knew who his father was, his mother raised him alone. Mamie was a very intelligent women. She was the first black student to get on to the schools “A” honor roll at a predominantly white school(Emmett Till Biography n.pag.). Emmett was known as an intelligent, funny, caring person. The biggest drawback of Till’s personality was that he was unaware of the severity of the racism in