It was on this day in 1955 that fourteen year old African American Emmett Till was brutally tortured and murdered for allegedly flirting with a white woman in Mississippi. Pictures of what they did to the boy are available through a simple google search.
The horror was magnified when an all white, all male jury acquitted the perpetrators, and we know they were because they later admitted it to Look Magazine.
All of this was so terrible and at the same time so consistent with the mistreatment of Americans of African descent, so common, that a tipping point finally was met. The majority population recoiled. And the African American community and their allies saw it was time. And this event is generally credited as the beginning of the modern Civil Rights movement.
So much has been accomplished since then.
And so much that is so deeply wrong continues. As long as someone’s life is in greater danger in this country because of the color of their skin, we need to keep the issue alive, to not allow ourselves to lull into some state of denial.
We need to remember.
We need to remember that fourteen year old. We need to recall all those before. And we need to recall all those since…
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In