Julia J's List: Emmett Till bookmarks

• In Mississippi, over 500 blacks had been lynched since 1882 and racially  motivated murders were not unfamiliar, especially in the Delta where Till was  going.

• With his mother's warning and wearing the ring that had belonged to his  deceased father, on August 20, 1955, Emmett Till setoff with his cousin Curtis  Jones on the train to Mississippi. When Till and Jones arrived on August 21,  they stayed at the home of Till's great-uncle Mose Wright, just on the outskirts  of Money, Mississippi.

• First they made him carry a 75 pound cotton gin fan to the riverbank.

  • the death
    
    made emmett carry 75 lbs cotton gin fan
    later, tied to it by wire, dropped in water
    
    the death of

• While visiting his relatives in Mississippi, Emmett and some other youth entered  a store, Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market in Money,  Mississippi, where it was reported Emmett whistled at a White woman.

• The body of Emmett Till was found floating three days  later in the Tallahatchie River, a fan from a cotton gin tied to his neck with  barbed wire.

  • emmett found in Tallahatchie River
    
    
    
    
    
    
    with fan tied to neck and barbed wire

• "Be careful. If you have to get down on your knees and bow when a white person  goes past, do it willingly."
• Emmett's death came a year after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education  decision outlawed segregation.

• • death news spread quickly
    even europe knew

• Till is said to have whistled at Mrs. Bryant

• "Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation and had him returned to you in a  pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you  this sickening sight is your son -- lynched?"
  -- Mamie Bradley,  mother of Emmett Till

  • background
    
    this is quote said by emmett till's mother, Mamie Bradley-Till
    
    the murder of

• The Emmett Till case quickly attracted national attention. Mamie Bradley,  Emmett's mother, asked that the body be shipped back to Chicago. When it  arrived, she inspected it carefully to ensure that it really was her son. Then,  she insisted on an open-casket funeral, so that "all the world [could] see what  they did to my son." Over four days, thousands of people saw Emmett's body. Many  more blacks across the country who might not have otherwise heard of the case  were shocked by pictures of the that appeared in Jet magazine. These  pictures moved blacks in a way that nothing else had. When the Cleveland Call  and Post polled major black radio preachers around the country, it found  that five of every six were preaching about Emmett Till, and half of them were  demanding that "something be done in Mississippi now." [17]

  • the death
    
    emmett's death spread all over world.
    pictures of open casket funeral in Jet magazine
    many people, eps. blacks, devistated
    
    the murder of
• The prosecution had trouble finding witnesses willing to testify against the two  men. At that time in Mississippi, it was unheard of for a black to publicly  accuse a white of committing a crime. Finally, Emmett's sixty-four year old  uncle Mose Wright stepped forward

  • the case
    
    hard to find person to testify against murderers
    unheard of to accuse white
    emmett's uncle voulunteered to do it
    
    tghe murder of

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