Because if we in America have reached the point in our desperate culture where we must murder children, no matter what reason or what color, we don’t deserve to survive and probably won’t. ?• Timothy B. Tyson.
The Emmett Till death situation changed a lot of lives in 1955 till this day. There has been many situations where African-American kids or young men have been killed for small things. The cause of all this is lynching and de facto segregation. A few effects are major. Forces people to acknowledge at racism when his mother had an open casket of him, helped black community unite as a black people, and has powerful influence on the world today.
By law it was illegal to have an open casket , but his mom was determined to have it. One of the reasons they didn’t want her to open the casket was because of the stench, because of the smell. She said it herself, she wanted to world to see what those men had done to her son because no one would have believed it if they didn’t the picture or didn’t see the casket. No one would have believed it. When they saw what happened, this motivated a lot of people that were standing, what we call “ on the fence,” against racism. It encouraged them to get in the fight and do something about it. Many say that that was the beginning of the civil rights era. We as African-Americans or black people were already fighting for equality , yet this helped bring together the whole nation. Including whites, Jews, Italians, and even Irishmen jumping in the fight, saying that racism was wrong. Legally colored people were freed In 1863 , but throughout the world we are still in search of equality til this day.
After the lynching of Till and his killer being let off this started a monumentis movement. The momentum and mobilization that followed Till’s murder fed the next stage of the movement. One hundred days after his death Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery city bus and was arrested for violating Alabama bus segregation laws. Which soon lead to a calling for a citywide bus boycott in which affected the world. Coming only one year after the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Till’s death provided an important catalyst for the American civil rights movement. Till’s lynching united in grief, solidarity and anger the black communities of Mississippi and Chicago. For many years nearly 200 anti lynching bills were presented to the congress and they were all turned down or blocked. The lynching Emmett gave the NAACP a much better vehicle for its anti-lynching campaign.
Sixty years later, at a time when race relations are once more at the front of the American minds, Till’s name is still invoked as a reminder of the worst consequences of ignoring the problem. Not coincidentally, his story has inspired a resurgence of interest from historians and scholars. Emmett Till is historical figure around the world. His casket got donate to the Smithsonian people are going to come from all over the world. They’re going to view this casket, and they’re going to ask questions. “ What’s the purpose of it?” Young kids will get a chance to hear the story. Then they’ll be able to… perhaps, a lot of these young kids perhaps, they will dedicate their lives to law enforcement or something like that. They will go out and do their best to help the little guys that can’t help themselves. Because in Mississippi, in 1955, we had no one to help us, not even the law enforcement. No one to help us. I hope that this will inspire our younger generation to be helpers to one another. Said in an interview by his cousin Simeon Wright.
Now during this time we are going through modern day lynchings. With the police killing blacks and getting away with it. We have came a long way in history as a people , but we have to keep fighting for equality. Like Mr. Wright said it start with the younger generation. We need to fight to get a better population of black lawyers, judges, congress, etc. This would make people like Mamie Till and her family proud.
