However painful it is, one must admit that the history of the U.S. is full of suffering, pain, and blatant injustice. In particular, racial discrimination is simultaneously one of the most shameful and outraging aspects of this history, and it even continues to exist nowadays, in the 21st century U.S. The current paper discusses a documentary, “The Murder of Emmett Till,” which presents the story of the death of Emmet Till, one of the most known victims of racial violence in the USA, and briefly considers the impact of this case on the history of civil rights movements which followed the case.
Emmet Till was a Black boy who was brutally murdered at the age of 14 by two White men for whistling at a Carolyn Bryant, a young white female shopkeeper from Mississippi, in 1955 (“The Murder of Emmett Till”). After describing the atmosphere of fear that reigned over the Black community in Mississippi in the 1950s, when Black men were forced to literally avoid meeting white females in the street due to the risk of being persecuted by the White community, the members of which predominantly viewed all the Black males as potential rapists, and the Black people on the whole as a threat to their whole way of life, which, given the chance, would consume their world and establish a Black domination, the movie describes the case of the boy’s murder in greater detail (“The Murder of Emmett Till”).
It is explained how the boy was raised in Chicago and came to Mississippi for a visit; how he attended the Bryants’ store with his friends and whistled at Carolyn Bryant; how the boys were scared by the shopkeeper who left the room, assuming that she went to fetch a gun; how the murderers came for the boy a few days later.
The trial at which the killers were acquitted by an entirely white jury, the members of which decided that the mutilated body of the boy could not be identified, and thus there were no grounds for convicting the two men, is also described, as well as the further development of the situation, when the murderers protected by the law against double jeopardy sold their story to the “Look” magazine for $4,000. However, it is stated that even the mass protests which were stirred by the murder failed to convince the federal authorities to re-investigate the case (“The Murder of Emmett Till”).
Nevertheless, the blatant injustice that took place in Mississippi caught international attention. More importantly, it stirred up a wave of civil protests aimed at promoting racial equality and battling the discrimination of the Black people across the United States.
It is stated that the case worked as a spark which caused the Black community to explode and to start mass demonstrations and campaigns against the inhumane treatment that African Americans would get in Mississippi, and the severe discrimination that they still faced across the rest of the U.S.; the Montgomery bus boycott is mentioned as one of the protest events that followed the murder (“The Murder of Emmett Till”).
Even though a search in the literature and on the Web revealed no evidence that the story of Emmet Till is directly related to the contemporary social justice movements in African American community, it is clear that the civil protests which were stirred up by the case played a significant role in lives of future Black generations, and that if it were not for these protests and movements, the Black people would probably be in a much worse situation today than they presently are. It should also be noted that the recent disclosure of the confession of Carolyn Bryant that she slandered Emmett Till, making up accusations against him during the trial in 1955 (Mitchell), might bring up the case of the boy’s murder once again among the contemporary civil rights movements.
Works Cited
Mitchell, J. “Emmett Till’s Accuser Admits She Lied. What Now?” USA Today. 2017. Web.
“The Murder of Emmett Till – Documetary in HD.” YouTube, 2013. Web.