by Jeremy Martinez
Emmett Till was murdered on August 28th, 1955. The young Emmett was always a great child, even since he was very young; but segregation was very hard for a child like Emmett to grow up in, especially in the south, where black people were treated like they weren’t even people.
In the south, it was hard for black people to walk on the street without a white person screaming at them. If a black person (they were also called “colored” at that time) person and a white person were walking on the same sidewalk, the colored person would have to get off the sidewalk and let the white person walk by. If the colored person didn’t move, the white person often could slap him or her. During his life, Emmett Till would always try to stay out of trouble.
A brutal murder.
One time, as Emmett was going to the store to get gum, he saw a white woman and he was accused of whistling at her. Her husband heard about this, and he decided to take care of this situation himself. Emmett got to his house and he and his family all went to bed, and two white men showed up at Emmett’s door.
The white men took Emmett with him to a barn yard, and abused him and hit him with 49. magnum pistol. He was then shot, wrapped with barbed wire, and thrown into a river with a fan from a cotton gin tied to his body. His body was found at the end of the Mississippi River, bloated up with bullet wounds his body and blood and scratches all over him. His mother had an open casket at his funeral, and many people showed up–but because of how badly he was mutilated, many people fainted. Emmett’s mother moved to the north; she was still sad, but she was safer from all the troubles of the south.
After Till’s death, people fought political battles to stop the taking of colored lives. Sometimes it would not turn out well, and many of them would be killed because of their protests. But eventually, after all these crises, people have started getting along. They started to rebuild and forgive for all that has happened, and African American people started to live freer happier lives in many places. Many found jobs that helped them pay for their new homes.
Emmett’s murder inspired people to stand up against racism. People used to be free to kill African Americans whenever they felt like it, but now people can go to jail for this kind of violence. Even though much of the old racism is still going on, African Americans can now become doctors, lawyers, and politicians, and this shows how society has grown over the years.
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