Emmet Till

Emmett Till was a boy from Chicago, Illinois, where the views on blacks were a lot different than those of southerners. It was the summer of 1955 and Emmett was a typical fourteen year old boy who was sent by his mother to go visit his uncle in Money, Mississippi. Before he left, his mother had warned him not to fool with the white people down in Mississippi. She also told him, "If you have to get on your knees and bow when a white person goes past, do it willingly." When his mother told him this, she nor Emmett had no idea that the summer of 1955 would have such a great impact on the Civil Rights Movement. The town that Emmett was visiting was known for the lynchings that commonly occurred. A few days after he had arrived, he had met up with some other boys to go get some drinks and hang out at the town market. While at the market, Emmett Till supposedly whistled or flirted with one of the owners of the market. Today this is a very common thing to occur. The woman that Emmett flirted with was a white woman, however, and she also had a husband. Today, it is not uncommon to see interracial couples, but in 1955, it was strongly disagreed upon. I personally do not agree with what Emmett did because of the fact that he was black and she was white. I also disagree with the fact that he flirted with a woman who was married. Emmett, however, did not realize that this incident would lead to his death.

Emmett Till was later punished for what he had done in the town market. The woman's husband found out about what happened and he and his half brother were very upset. They decided that they were going to go to Emmett's uncle's house and teach Emmett Till a lesson. The two men kidnapped him and took him into a neighboring county, which was known as Sunflower County. He was taken to an old plantation shed and it was there that Emmett was forced to pay the consequences of what he did. Emmett Till was brutally beaten by the two men, and was nonetheless tortured until his death. One of is eyes was gouged out and he was then shot with a pistol. The two men then tied a seventy-five pound cotton gin fan around Emmett's neck with barbed wire. The husband of the white woman and his half brother did this because they planned to drown his body in the river and they wanted him to sink. The two men went through with this and ended up putting him in the Tallahatchie River. Although I disagree with what Emmett