Friday, October 11, 2019

The Murder of Emmett Till

Clearly, the murder of Emmett Till was a major part of the Civil Rights Movement because it had opened the eyes of citizens who had believed there was no difference living as a person of color than there was living as a white person. The Emmett Till case was about a young boy who was visitings some relatives up in Money, Mississippi. He rode in a car with a few other cousins and family members around his age (14) to Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market, when one of Emmett's relatives had recommended that he attempt to get with the clerk of the store. However after attempting to flirt with her he left unsuccessful and gave her a kiss on her cheek. The clerk then told her husband about the encounter and how she was approached as Emmett made unwilling advances upon the clerk. As Emmett left the store he had bragged about how he â€Å"Got a Date† with the clerk, his relatives were instantly worried for his safety warning him that it was dangerous to make advances on white people, especially women. After being taken to the home in which his relatives lived in, there was commotion at the door, then all of a sudden. The clerks husband and his brother in law had barged into the room where Emmett was sleep and drug him outside and beat him to near death. They had thought of taking him to a hospital and giving them a fake story about how they found him beaten up, but decided he was a lost cause and tied a cinder block to his ankle and dropped what was left of him down the Tallahatchie River to sleep with the fishes. After three days of the kidnapping of Till they had found his body in the Tallahatchie River, the only way they knew it was him was by the ring on his finger, a ring his father had given to him. The news had spread around Till's family quickly, and his mother demanded his body be brought back to chicago so he can be buried properly. She had also requested that the funeral had an open casket to show the 50,000 people that attended the funeral just what those men had done to her son. She had later set up a trial to put the two men who had murdered her boy behind bars, however after hours of the court arguing who did what and who didn't do what, the two men were found not guilty for the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till

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