The Lynching of Emmett Till

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1 Don’t You Dare Whistle In August of 1955, Emmett Louis Till of Chicago Illinois, was brutally killed for allegedly saying inappropriate remarks and wolf-whistling at a white woman in Money, Mississippi. No matter what the offense, murder shouldn't have been the consequence for an inappropriate remark or a whistle. And although young Emmett should not have been murdered, his death brought about a lasting change for good. Emmett was a 14 year old black boy, and an only child of his momma who was “liked by everybody” (Metress, 30). Emmett went to Mississippi to visit family for a week and was staying at the home of his uncle, Mose Wright. After bragging to his southern cousins and some friends about his friendships with the white people up north, they dared him to go into a store and say something to the white woman that worked there. After the provoking, Emmett went into the grocery store to answer their challenge. Entering that store, he had no idea that he was breaking the Jim Crow laws of the South, and that his actions would bring about his death. According to his uncle Mose, at approximately 2:00 in the morning three days after Emmett had gone into the store and talked to the white woman who was later identified as Carolyn Bryant, Emmett was awakened out of bed and taken from Mose’s house. His uncle would later identify the men who had taken Emmett as Roy Bryant and J.W Milam. A few days after he was taken his body was found in the Tallahatchie River, weighed down by a cotton gin fan and he was found to have been beaten and shot in the head before he was drowned. The unspoken laws of the Jim Crow South back in 1955 were evident; especially if you were an African American person. African American men knew, for example, that when they saw 2 a white woman approaching them on the street they not only had to avoid physical contact with that woman,

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