Emmitt+Till+Before+and+After

Emmett Till


 * Before After**

“Have you ever sent a loved son on vacation and had him returned to you in a pine box, so horribly battered and water-logged that someone needs to tell you this sickening sight is your son---lynched?”(Cozzens, 1)

--Manie Bradley, mother of Emmett Till--

Emmett Till was born on July 25, 1941, in Chicago, Illinois. He was the only child of Manie and Louis Till. When he was five, he was diagnosed with the disease of Polio. He was known as a prankster and risk-taker to the town. When in actuality he was intelligent and bold, with a slight mischievous streak. He was a boy who sought out older people in the town for religious information.

Name: Emmett Till [|Emmit Till Before Efter] Date of birth: July 25, 1941 Location of birth: Chiago, Illinois Died: August 28, 1955 Parents: Manie and Louis Till Attended the McCosh School in Chiago When he was five he was dignosed with Polio He made people open their eyes to black racism When Emmett was fourteen years old, he went to visit his relatives near Money, Mississippi. Before he left, his mother gave him some tips on proper behavior in the South. She told him that you do not talk to white people. As you meet a white women on the street you look down and do not make eye contact, and to step off the street if necessary.

After Emmett got to Mississippi he was with a few local boys. He showed them a picture of a white girl back home and told them that she was his girlfriend. The boys did not think that Emmett would talk to the women working in the store. He went into the store and as he left, he said, “Bye Baby” to Carolyn Bryant, the wife of the store owner.

While he was sleeping at the house of Mose Wright, two white men drove up in a blue Chevy truck, got out and entered the house. The men tied up Mose and when Emmett tried to help him they took him and forced him into the truck.

The two men took Emmett to an old abanded shack and beat him with a pistil. During the beating, they tied him up and shot him in the head. While they were beating him up, they gouged out one of his eyes. After he was dead they tied him up to a seventy-five pound fan and dropped him to the bottom of the Tallahassee River so that he would not float to the top of the river.

Before Emmett’s body was found Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were arrested for kidnapping Emmett. After they were arrested they were found not guilty. After they were arrested they were found not guilty. Three days after he was killed, he was found by the police at the bottom of the river. After he was found the police put him in a box and sent him back to his home in Chicago for a proper funeral. The state said that no one was to see his body but his mother demanded to see his body one more time. She wanted the world to see what had happened to her son. At first everyone just ignored it like it was normal to happen but later they took it very searious.

There are still things like this that are happening in the world today. One instance happened on July 17, 2001 when a black 17 year old, Raynard Johnson, was hung in a tree for whistling at a white women. This is basically what had happened in Emmett’s death.
 * The song written by Bob Dylan**


 * The Death of Emmett Till**

"Twas down in Mississippi no so long ago, When a young boy from Chicago town stepped through a Southern door. This boy's dreadful tragedy I can still remember well, The color of his skin was black and his name was Emmett Till.

Some men they dragged him to a barn and there they beat him up. They said they had a reason, but I can't remember what. They tortured him and did some evil things too evil to repeat. There was screaming sounds inside the barn, there was laughing sounds out on the street.

Then they rolled his body down a gulf amidst a bloody red rain And they threw him in the waters wide to cease his screaming pain. The reason that they killed him there, and I'm sure it ain't no lie, Was just for the fun of killin' him and to watch him slowly die.

And then to stop the United States of yelling for a trial, Two brothers they confessed that they had killed poor Emmett Till. But on the jury there were men who helped the brothers commit this awful crime, And so this trial was a mockery, but nobody seemed to mind.

I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see The smiling brothers walkin' down the courthouse stairs. For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free, While Emmett's body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.

If you can't speak out against this kind of thing, a crime that's so unjust, Your eyes are filled with dead men's dirt, your mind is filled with dust. Your arms and legs they must be in shackles and chains, and your blood it must refuse to flow, For you let this human race fall down so God-awful low!

This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan. But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give, We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.