#Black History

#Emmett Till

The shockingly violent murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in the summer of 1955 was one of the most painful moments in the history of American race relations. It was also a key turning point for the modern civil rights movement, using the mass media to galvanize protests to demand the end of Jim Crow Segregation and equality before the law.

The decision to publish the unvarnished photograph of her son's brutally battered head and face was made by one courageous person, Emmett Till's grieving mother, Mamie Till Mobley. Emmett Till was a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, who was lynched by white supremacists in Money, Mississippi, on August 28, 1955. Emmett Till's body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River with a 125-pound cotton gin fan belt tied around his neck. 

September 3, 1955, was the beginning of four days of the process of viewing the body of Emmett, and it was estimated that something like a hundred thousand people came to view his body in an open casket that his mother had designed. She allowed the press to photograph his body, and those photographs were published in Jet Magazine. Her decision to open the casket to allow those gruesome photographs to be published served as a catalyst for the next phase of the civil rights movement. 

What was seen in the mutilated remains of Emmett Till caused the death of innocence in this country. As Mamie Till Mobley expressed that there were no more innocent bystanders, we all had to take responsibility and become active in turning things around. What effect did this have on Mamie? Well, she was devastated but was able to minimize her grief for a mission. If the death of my son can mean something to other unfortunate people all over the world, then for him to have died, a hero, would mean more to me than for him just to have died. 

It's a story that still resonances today as we see the name Emmett Till is raised every time another Black male is taken down in an act of violence by a White perpetrator, and even a White authority figure who gets away with it. Although Emmett’s murderers walked free, Mamie Till Mobley’s prescient use of the media was a dramatic turning point in the movement. Just a few months later, Rosa Parks would refuse to move from her seat on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama, launching the modern civil rights movement. Today the widespread use of social media plays an enormously critical role in the pursuit of justice for Black victims of state-sponsored violence.